Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit/I had another vision from the Sovereign LORD. In it I saw a basket of fruit. See 7.1; 7.4; 7.7. Even though the story of this vision is separated from the others, the translation should follow the same pattern. However, because of the distance from the others something may be needed to tie them together: “Here is what the LORD showed me in still another vision: it was a basket of fruit.”

Behold. See 7.1.

Basket. The Hebrew term was no doubt a general one for receptacle. The translation should have a general word if possible, one which would be appropriate for showing fruit for sale in the market place, carrying it, or storing it. If no kind of basket is suitable, then any container used for the purpose would be all right.

Fruit. The Hebrew word is the same as for “summer” and means here “that which the summer produces.” It is wrong to translate as summer fruit (Revised Standard Version, Smith-Goodspeed, The Translator’s Old Testament), since it suggests a contrast with some other seasonal fruit. Some translations have “ripe fruit” (Moffatt, New American Bible; compare New English Bible: “ripe summer fruit”), in order to make a pun in the English text of the next verse. There would be no point in translating “ripe” in languages where “the time is ripe” (verse 2) is not an idiom. Most languages have a general term for fruit. If not, a specific kind of fruit can be used in translation. In Hebrew probably the fruit here is “figs.”

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 .