Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt/People of Israel, listen to this message which the LORD has spoken about you, the whole nation that he brought out of Egypt. Because of the important relationship between this passage and the previous one (see 3.1-2), it would be helpful in many languages to show the relationship with a word like “so.”
The Hebrew gives translators a problem because it changes from Amos speaking to God speaking right within the same sentence. Such a rapid change happens often in prophetic writings, and the reason may be that the prophet identifies himself completely with the message of the LORD.
However, this kind of change is often awkward and grammatically unacceptable in other languages. There are three ways of dealing with it in translation: (a) the LORD may speak from the beginning: “I, the LORD”; (b) the LORD may begin to speak in the second half of the verse, as in Hebrew, with a change to indicate whose family is being talked about: “I led your whole family out of Egypt”; (c) the LORD does not begin to speak until the next verse so that Amos continues speaking throughout verse 1: the whole nation that he brought out of Egypt. (c) is the best solution. It is a simple matter of a change of pronoun and gives little problem.
People of Israel. Good News Translation moves this to the first of the sentence. In each translation it should be given a natural position in keeping with language usage.
Message which the LORD has spoken. To “speak” a message is not fully natural in English, and other wordings may be better in other languages as well: “Listen to this message from the LORD about you, people of Israel!”, “Listen to what the LORD has to say about you.”
Brought out. One way in which the sorrowful tone of this passage can be strengthened in some languages is through the use of a word which is warmer than brought out in English: “rescued” or “led out” or some other term that implies personal involvement.
Whole family/whole nation. Whole nation or “whole race” (Moffatt) or “all the people” is the meaning of the Hebrew.
Quoted with permission from de Waard, Jan & Smalley, William A. A Handbook on Amos. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1979. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .