INTRODUCTION: THE PROPHET 1.1.
This short section forms the title and serves as an introduction to the book of Amos. It has information about the prophet: his name, his social position, the time and place where he lived, why he did what is written here. However, in many languages it will not be understood as a title unless special care is taken in the translation. One way of doing this is to use special type and print the verse in a block under the modern book title:
1 These are the words of Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa. Two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel, God revealed to Amos all these things about Israel.
Section heading. Bible de Jérusalem (bj) uses “Title” before verse 1; Smith-Goodspeed in taking verses 1 and 2 together uses the heading “Title and Purpose of the Book.” New English Bible (neb) prints the words of Amos in capitals. Today’s English Version (tev) omits any section heading.
What the translator should do depends in good part on what he decides about trying to show the balanced structure of the book of Amos in the section headings (see Translating Amos, Section 2.4). If he wants to stay with a simple, traditional set of headings, the best solution is probably not to have any heading here. If he decides to do something along the line of what is suggested in Translating Amos, and to reflect what he can of the balanced structure of the book, then he needs to consider both a heading for the first part of the book (1.1–5.3) and one for this single verse.
For a title to the longer part, in Translating Amos we suggest “Israel’s Guilt; The Prophet’s Responsibility.” This can be translated in such a way as “Israel Has Sinned; The Prophet Must Proclaim/Announce God’s Message.” For verse 1 the heading could be simply “Title” or “Introduction,” or it could be something like “Introduction: The Prophet” or “Introduction: The One Who Spoke God’s Message.”
Amos 1:1.
In Hebrew this verse is a rather difficult sentence with three parts, as is clearly seen in the rsv: (1) “words of Amos, “(2)”who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, “(3)” which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. “The problem is how (3) relates to (1). One possibility can be expressed like this: “words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, and who had visions …. “Depending on the needs of the language of the translation, such a meaning can be expressed in slightly different ways: “These are the words of Amos, who …; these are the visions which he had”; or “This is the book of the words of Amos, who …; this is the book of the visions which he had …. “The translator may use this meaning, * which certainly shows the two major kinds of message in the book,* although it is not the meaning most scholars prefer. The possibility which most scholars seem to prefer however, is “the words of Amos … which he received” (Smith-Goodspeed),* as many languages would express it. This implies “which he received from God.” This meaning is the base of the tev: These are the words of Amos … God revealed to Amos all these things …. Or: “This is the book of the words Amos spoke … God gave him these messages about Israel ….”
Amos. This is the only person in the Old Testament who has this name.* It should be translated as an ordinary name and the spelling adapted to the sounds of the language of the translation. (See Translator’s Handbook on Ruth, 1.2) In doing this the translator should be careful not to use the same spelling as for the different name Amoz in Isaiah 1.1.
Amos’ father is not mentioned, which may be a problem in some languages, but this does not mean anything about Amos’ social position.* In languages where names should have titles with them, the title for Amos should be based on his role as prophet rather than shepherd (Translating Amos, Section 4). A title suitable for someone who delivered God’s message and spoke it with authority should be used. However, Amos was not a priest or any other kind of official religious leader, and his title should not imply that he was.
In some languages the first introduction of a major person must be indicated by an expression such as “There was a prophet Amos” or “Have Amos,” as it is expressed in some parts of the world. The translator will have to decide whether this introduction is more natural here in verse 1, or (if verse 1 is treated as a title) if it should be in verse 2: “Have prophet Amos, who said”:
“Who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, “(rsv)/ a shepherd from the town of Tekoa. This simply means that Amos was “formerly one of the shepherds from the town of Tekoa.” It does not mean that there were many shepherds living together, as rsv can imply. The tev (compare New American Bible [nab] and neb) may also be misleading as it does not show that this was no longer true.* Moffatt (mft) correctly translates: “who belonged to the shepherds of Tekoa.”
Shepherd. The Hebrew word translated here is used only one other time in the Old Testament (2 Kgs 3.4) where it is used of Mesha, the king of Moab, and where it has the meaning of “sheep-breeder.” Sheep breeding must have been a rather profitable business as it enabled King Mesha to send the wool of a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams to the king of Israel each year. Texts from related cultures* also seem to indicate that these sheep-breeders were well-to-do, and Amos was probably one of the important men of Tekoa. He was surely more than a simple shepherd:* “one of the sheep-farmers” (neb).*
For languages which do not have vocabulary referring to stock raising, it may be possible to use some sort of descriptive phrase (such as “owner of sheep” or even “owner of many sheep”) to show the importance of Amos’ social position. Where people consider sheep to be dirty despised animals, it is even more important that the translation show Amos as the one profiting from owning the sheep rather than caring directly for them, if this is possible. Sheep are known in most parts of the world, although in some places they are called by such names as “cotton deer” or “woolly goat.” Where a specific name for sheep is lacking it may be possible to use a descriptive phrase like “an animal which produces wool.”
“Of Tekoa “(rsv)/ from the town of Tekoa. Tekoa was the town Amos considered his home, even though his ministry was in Bethel. Different languages express the idea of the home town in different ways: “born in the town/ village of Tekoa,” “his (father’s) town/village was Tekoa,” etc. In translation it will often be necessary to include the word “town/village.”*
“Which he saw concerning Israel “(rsv)/ God revealed to Amos all these things about Israel. tev has changed the order of this phrase. Each translation should use whatever order is smooth and clear. Possible translations have already been discussed, but there are some other problems for the translator if the meaning chosen by the tev is followed.
Reveal. The meaning may be expressed by “made known” or “showed.”
These things, in the tev, are the messages of the book. In some languages the expression for “this” or “these” does not point forward to what follows in the text so cannot be used here. Other restructurings can take care of this problem: “This book contains (or: in this book are written) the words of Amos, … God gave Amos these words to say about Israel ….” Note that now “this book” points outside the text to the book itself, and “these words” points back to “words of Amos.” In other languages something like “the words continuing/going on from here” would be best.
Israel. Since this term has several meanings in the Bible, the translator should make sure that in the translation here it clearly means the kingdom which divided off from David’s and Solomon’s kingdom after Solomon died (1 Kgs 12.16–20; 2 Chr 10.1–19). It may be helpful in some translations to say “the country (or kingdom) of Israel.,”
Two years before the earthquake … king of Israel. See Translating Amos, Section 1. In Hebrew the time of the earthquake is mentioned last, the time of the rulers first. The order is reversed in the tev because for English and many other languages the Hebrew order can be misleading. It can sound like the kings ruled two years before the earthquake rather than that Amos received the message then. Also, Two years before the earthquake is a more specific time than the longer period when the kings ruled. In each language the translator will have to decide what makes the clearest and most natural order.
All of these time periods are mentioned in a way which sounds as though the reader should know all about them, something which may not be true of modern readers. On the other hand, translations in some languages (especially languages without words like the) are likely to sound as though the reader should be learning about this time information for the first time, as though the English were “… two years before an earthquake, when a certain Uzziah was king of a country called Judah, and someone called Jeroboam … was king of another country called Israel.” Such a translation is misleading. All languages have ways of indicating “the one you know about” either grammatically or with special words. Sometimes it is with the use of equivalents for “this” or “that”: “two years before that earthquake … when that Uzziah … and that Jeroboam ….” The reader may not actually know about the earthquake or the kings, but the wording should express to him the idea that he is not being told about them but that they are the setting for the rest of what is being said.
In many languages the two kings should have titles with their names (Translating Amos, Section 4).
Earthquake. Most languages will have a term for earthquake. This earthquake, however, must have been a particularly violent one because it was used for dating in a region where earthquakes are common. The translator may have to say: “two years before the great/violent earthquake.” When there is no equivalent noun in the receptor language, the event can be described in a short phrase “two years before the earth/ ground shook violently.”
bj La Bible de Jérusalem
neb New English Bible
tev Today’s English Version
rsv Revised Standard Version
* So K. Budde, Zu Text und Auslegung des Buches Amos, JBL 43, 1924, pp. 46–131; 44, 1925, pp. 63–122; E. Sellin, Das Zwölfprophetenbuch übersetzt und erklärt, Leipzig, 1929–30; A. Weiser, Die Prophetie des Amos, ZAW Beih. 53, 1929; idem, Das Buch der zwölf kleinen Propheten I, ATD 24, Göttingen, 1956; K. Cramer, Amos. Versuch einer theologischen Intepretation, BWANT 51, 1930; C. van Gelderen, Het Boek Amos, Kampen, 1933. The same preference is to be found in W. Baumgartner, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Lexicon zum Alten Testament I, Leiden, 1967 s.v. hazah, and in the translations of mft Dhorme, and bj. See also J. de Waard, “Selected Translation Problems from the Prophets with Particular Reference to Bamiléké,” TBT 22 (1971):146–154, especially pp. 146–147.
* Modern research shows that the book of Amos is made up of a collection of oracles together with a collection of reports concerning visions.
*
The most important arguments for such a reading are to be found in C. F. Keil, Biblischer Commentar über die zwölf kleinen Propheten, Leipzig, 1888; A. van Hoonacker, Les douze petits prophètes, Paris, 1908; J. Touzard, Le livre d’Amos, Paris, 1909; S. Amsler, Amos, in Commentaire de l’Ancien Testament XIa, Neuchâtel, 1965; R. S. Cripps, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Amos, London, 1969; H. W. Wolff, Amos, in Biblischer Kommentar Altes Testament XIV/2: Dodekapropheton 2: Joel und Amos, Neukirchen, 1969. The arguments are that (1) in comparable titles of prophetic books of the Old Testament the verb for “to see” is never used without a grammatical object and “words” is the only available object, and (2) this is the way the text has been read by ancient translators. (So all known lxx manuscripts [see J. Ziegler, Duodecim prophetae, in Septuaginta, Vetus Testamentum Graecum auctoritate academiae litterarum Göttingensis editum XIII, Göttingen, 1967] and Vulgate.)
The expression “to see a word” occurs also elsewhere in the Old Testament (Isa 2.1 and Micah 1.1; compare also Isa 13.1 and Hab 1.1), but the remarkable statement that “Amos saw the words of Amos” is without parallel in the Old Testament. It is, of course, true that much of the harshness of the expression is due to the hand of the final redactor who tried to combine the two sources of the book in the title. Though we are able to reconstruct with some degree of certainty the work of a “school of Amos” as well as that of later interpreters and redactors, we are not primarily concerned with such a reconstruction in the field of translation. Our concern is to translate the book of Amos as it has been transmitted, not to give a translation of its sources. This means that in a dynamic translation harsh expressions or constructions of the source text which betray the work of a redactor, disappear.
More recent translations in English, such as neb and nab, have tried to smooth out this particular difficulty by translating idiomatically: “The words of Amos … which he received in vision(s).” But such a translation is not obligatory. At quite an early the the word for ‘vision’ was already used in the more general sense of ‘revelation,’ and this general use gave rise to the more specific meaning ‘word revelation,’ ‘oracle.’ In the same way the verb for ‘to see’ could be used for the reception of revelation generally and for the reception of divine oracles in particular. (See Koehler-Baumgartner, s. v. hazah; L. Koehler, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 1966, par. 36; H. Wildberger, Jesaja, in Bibischer Kommentar Altes Testament X/1, Neukirchen, 1965, p. 5.)
* The meaning of the name is obscure. It can be compared with the name Amasiah (2 Chr 17.16) Which in Hebrew sounds like “Yahweh bears.” Amos may even be a shorter form of the same name. (Compare M. Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen, 1928, p. 178. See also Wolff ad loc. for Aramaic parallels and Cripps in the introduction to his commentary [p. 10] who defends a passive meaning “borne [by God].”)
* L. Köhler (Amos in Schweiz. Theol. Zeitschrift 34, 1917, pp. 10–21; 68–79; 145–157; 190–208) thinks that the absence of the father’s name may lead to the conclusion that Amos was the son of poor people.
* The perfect tense of the verb “to be” in Hebrew clearly indicates the past. (See P. Joüon, Grammaire de l’hébreu biblique, Rome, 1947, par. 154m.)
mft Moffatt
* See the Ugaritic texts 62, 55 and 113, 71.
* So Targum: “marey geytin,” “masters (i.e. owners) of the flock.”
* On the basis of the related root in Arabic, these might be sheep of a particular breed with short legs and producing good wool.
*
Tekoa is a village of Judah, 17 kilometers south of Jerusalem built upon a hill 825 meters above sea level. (Compare G. E. Wright, F. V. Filson, W. F. Albright, The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible, London, 1957, Plate IX.) The precise location of ancient Tekoa was probably on the east side of modern hirbet teku’. The rabbinic and mediaeval thesis that Tekoa was located in the northern kingdom or more particularly in the tribe of Asher (so Kimhi) lacks convincing arguments.
Because Tekoa was a border place it was fortified by King Rehoboam, according to 2 Chr II. >6. In 2 Sam 14 a story is told about an important role played by a “wise woman of Tekoa.”
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