1 Chronicles 7:40 in 6 translations
6 distinct wordings, grouped by what each translation is trying to do. Differences from the King James text are marked below.
Early modern English
Seventeenth-century wording and sentence shape. Familiar, rhythmic, and the version most quotations you have heard are taken from.
All these were the children of Asher, heads of their father’s house, choice and mighty men of valour, chief of the princes. And the number throughout the genealogy of them that were apt to the war and to battle was twenty and six thousand men.
1611 / 1769 · Public domain · The Authorised Version, revised to the 1769 Blayney text. Includes the Apocrypha as printed in 1611.
Literal, word-for-word
Follows Hebrew and Greek word order and grammar closely, even where the English becomes stiff. Useful for seeing what the underlying sentence is doing.
All these were the children of Asher, heads of the fathers` houses, choice and mighty men of valor, chief of the princes. And the number of them reckoned by genealogy for service in war was twenty and six thousand men.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
All these were the sons of Asher, heads of fathers' houses, choice men, mighty of valour, chiefs of the princes. And their number according to their genealogy, registered as fit for service for war, was twenty-six thousand men.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
All these are sons of Asher, heads of the house of the fathers, chosen ones, mighty in valour, heads of the princes, with their genealogy, for the host, for battle, their number is twenty and six thousand men.
1898 · Public domain · The most extreme word-for-word rendering here, keeping Hebrew and Greek tense and word order at the cost of natural English.
Modern English
Contemporary vocabulary and punctuation, aiming for the sentence a present-day reader would write while staying close to the source.
All these were the children of Asher, heads of the fathers’ houses, choice and mighty men of valor, chief of the princes. The number of them listed by genealogy for service in war was twenty-six thousand men.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
Simplified English
Built from a deliberately small vocabulary so the sense stays reachable for new readers and non-native speakers. Trades nuance for clarity.
All these were the children of Asher, heads of their families, specially strong men of war, chiefs of the rulers. They were recorded in the army for war, twenty-six thousand men in number.
1949 · Public domain · Written with roughly a thousand basic English words plus a small Bible vocabulary. The plainest reading available here.
What changes between the King James and modern wording
The modern rendering is printed below with every word that differs from the King James text marked, so the actual divergence is visible rather than left for you to spot.
All these were the children of Asher, heads of the fathers’ houses, choice and mighty men of valor, chief of the princes. the number of them listed by genealogy for service in war was twenty-six thousand men.
Word-for-word swaps
- house→the
- valour→valor
- the→listed
- six→twenty
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.
Not shown for this verse: Open English Bible (US), Open English Bible (Commonwealth). Those translations are still incomplete in the corpus, and empty cards are not padded in.