So two or three cities wandered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied/Weak with thirst, the people of several cities went to a city where they hoped to find water, but there was not enough to drink. Two or three cities means the people of several cities, and in languages where cities cannot stand for people or be described as doing things like people, it will be necessary to translate as in Good News Translation (compare also New English Bible and The Translator’s Old Testament).

The Hebrew word for wander or went indicates also a state of exhaustion for which “staggered” might be an English equivalent. However, apart from the difficulty of finding a close, natural equivalent, the translator may need to make the reason for the wandering (thirst) clear in the translation and say something like weak with thirst, they went … where they hoped to find. In some languages the natural expression for this state will be “sick of thirst” or “thirsty nearly dead.”

One city/a city. Another town than their own.

On the expressions repeated in each of these paragraphs (yet you did not return to me, says the LORD), see 4.6-11.

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 .