These are Yahweh’s words that Moses is to speak to the Israelites. You have seen, literally “You [plural], you saw,” is emphatic, so Revised English Bible has “You yourselves have seen” (so also New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, and Translator’s Old Testament). What I did to the Egyptians means “What I, the LORD did” (Good News Translation). In some languages the appositional construction, “I, the LORD,” will be unnatural style. In such cases one may say, for example, “What [or, The things that] I who am Yahweh did.” And how I bore you on eagle’s wings is literally “and I lifted you up on wings of eagles.” This is a metaphor that Good News Translation changes to a simile, “and how I carried you as an eagle carries her young on her wings.”
The word for eagle includes several varieties of large birds of prey, known for their powerful wings and swift flight. This figure of speech is based on a poetic picture of how the eagle teaches its offspring to fly, namely, that it will catch them on its wings when they fall. Such an activity has never been seen in real life, and so it is best to deal with this as a poetic figure created in order to picture God’s care for his people. (See Deut 32.11 for a more complete description of this metaphor.) In areas where eagles are not known, one may substitute another large bird of prey; but it should be one that can be pictured as catching its babies on its wings. If such a bird is not available, one may say something like “as a huge bird named ‘eagle’ carries….” It will also be helpful to include an illustration of an eagle and a note in the Glossary. And brought you to myself suggests that Yahweh means, as Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version express it, “how I brought you here to me,” that is, to this mountain.
Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
Exodus 19:4: The expression “I carried you on eagles’ wings” (NIV) involves a metaphor that has been taken literally by readers in many languages. However, the text does not mean that eagles carried the Israelites to Sinai. Rather the metaphor refers to God’s protection, speed, and power and means “I brought you here as if I had been a flying eagle carrying you.”
Some commentaries have quoted an often repeated but unsubstantiated statement to the effect that the Israelites believed that eagles carry their young on their wings. Some commentaries have even claimed that naturalists have actually seen eagles doing this. There is no independent evidence for this belief apart from two biblical passages of which this is one, and none of the naturalists who have specialized in the observation of eagles has ever reported this kind of behavior. These commentaries have actually misinterpreted the Hebrew idiom “on wings,” which does not mean “on the upper surface of the wings” but rather “in flight.”
Source: All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible (UBS Helps for Translators)