When they had finished eating the grass of the land/In my vision I saw the locusts eat up every green thing in the land. The Hebrew sentence is not complete, something like “And it would have happened that, if they had eaten up everything green in the land….” This could be restructured as “What would have happened, had they eaten up everything green in the land!” However, the great majority of scholars believed the spelling of the Hebrew should be changed to something which would mean “While they were eating … I said” (New American Bible) or “When they were on the point of eating … I said.” Many languages express such events which take place at the same time by something like “The locusts were on the point of eating everything green in the land, I said….”

The grass/every green thing. The Hebrew word means not only grass, but all green plants. It may be necessary to choose a particular kind of plant like “grass” if the language does not have such a general term for vegetation (so also Smith-Goodspeed and New American Bible).

I said/and then I said. In what follows Amos is asking God to spare Israel from the which he sees in the picture of the locusts eating everything green. In some languages I said may not be strong enough: “I begged (the LORD),” “I pleaded,” etc., using a word for speaking to someone on behalf of someone else.

The emotional tone of what Amos says is very important in translation here. Amos’ tender concern should be felt in the translation, in contrast to his anger and scorn in Chapter 6. Also, in some languages people speak differently when talking to God or a king and when talking with other people. Amos’ words must sound suitable (Translating Amos, Section 4).

O Lord GOD, forgive/Sovereign LORD, forgive your people. In many languages to use a word like “forgive” means that it is necessary to state who is to be forgiven, as in Good News Translation. What the translator does will depend, of course, on the way he translates this meaning. In some languages there are descriptive phrases such as “to think about (something) no longer.” Others use pictures like “to wash away” or “to turn one’s back on sins,” “to make the heart soft,” “to heal the neck.” In some cases there are such cultural equivalents as “spit is returned to the ground (for someone) (by God).”

How can Jacob stand/How can they survive. As elsewhere Jacob stands for “Israel” (see 3.13; 6.8). If something like your people was supplied in the preceding sentence, a pronoun as in Good News Translation may be enough; otherwise something like “descendants of Jacob,” “(people of) Israel,” etc. Stand can best be translated as survive (so also The Translator’s Old Testament).

He is so small/The are so small and weak. Another good English word would be “helpless” (The Translator’s Old Testament).

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 .