Verse 10 continues the list of punishments, but there is no other immediate connection with verse 9. Attention now is on the sorrow that will result from punishment, not on disruptions in nature. For many languages a connection like “also” or “not only that but” will be needed between the verses.

I will turn your feasts into mourning/I will turn your festivals into funerals. Festivals into funerals makes a very effective contrast in English, but in many cultures funerals may be considered a kind of feast. Some possibilities: “while you are feasting joyfully, I will make you start mourning” or “I will make/cause you not to feast joyfully, but to mourn.”

And all your songs into lamentation/and change your glad songs into cries of grief. For many languages Good News Translation is an excellent model. However, in languages where “songs” are only cheerful it may be better to contrast “songs” and “lamentations.”

I will bring sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness on every head/I will make you shave your heads and wear sackcloth. Two particular mourning customs are mentioned: (1) to put on clothing of coarse hairy material, wrapped around the waist; (2) to shave the head, either completely or in part. Baldness on every head will usually be understood wrongly as natural baldness. I will make you shave your heads is better. Make you or “cause you” is often necessary because the LORD is not actually doing the shaving. In the same way it is usually best to say I will make you … wear sackcloth.

Sackcloth often has to be translated with a phrase like “rough coarse cloth around your waist.” However, even then the reader may not understand that the shaving and sackcloth are customs of mourning for the dead. So it may be necessary to add something like “to show that you are mourning.”

It is sometimes possible to use equivalent mourning customs from the culture of the translator, especially if they are not very different from the Hebrew ones: for example, “I will put the cord of mourning around your neck,” which would be immediately understood in certain cultures. However, there are dangers as well as advantages in such a cultural translation. Particular aspects of the Hebrew culture are lost, and there may be undesirable meanings.

I will make it like the mourning for an only son/and you will be like parents mourning for their only son. The Hebrew translated by it refers to the total event. One possibility: “I will make you mourn like someone whose only son has died.” Good News Translation also gives a good model.

And the end of it like a bitter day/That day will be bitter to the end. Here again it refers to the total event. The meaning is “on that day (from verse 9) … the end of everything will be like a day of tragedy” (compare The Translator’s Old Testament) or “on that day … everything will end in tragedy.” A possible translation might be something like “everything which happens will end with great sorrow.”

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 .