For behold. See 2.13; 4.13. Again Good News Translation does not make any connection, and does not show that this is the climactic statement in 6.8-11. A good translation in English would be “So it is that….”

The LORD commands, and the great house shall be smitten into fragments, and the little house into bits/When the LORD gives the command, houses large and small will be smashed to pieces. It is possible to interpret this verse in more than one way. The verb in the first sentence could be taken to mean “the LORD is the one who commands!” and then the LORD could be taken as the one doing the shattering. More likely, however, he commands someone to do the shattering. In the light of the message of the whole book and of this particular section (see verse 14), the one commanded is probably an enemy nation or enemy army.

It may be advisable to say this clearly in translation. However, since we do not know the specific cause of the destruction, it would be best to avoid stating who is doing the shattering. The translation can be as in Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation, or something like “the great house will fall into ruins, and the small house will break.”

Some of the repetition of ideas has been combined in Good News Translation and expressed only once: houses large and small will be smashed to pieces. This is a good example for languages in which parallelism is unnatural or leads to bad style. But in many languages it would be better style not to combine these.

The Hebrew words for fragments and bits are parallel in their vowel sounds, as can be seen from the following transcription: resisim and beqiʿim. This contributes to the poetic effect, and should be kept in mind when translating as poetry.

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 .