1 Samuel 14:30 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.
How much more, if haply the people had eaten freely to day of the spoil of their enemies which they found? for had there not been now a much greater slaughter among the Philistines?
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.
How much more, if haply the people had eaten freely to-day of the spoil of their enemies which they found? for now hath there been no great slaughter among the Philistines.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
How much more, if the people had eaten freely to-day of the spoil of their enemies which they found? for would there not now have been a much greater slaughter among the Philistines?
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
How much more if the people had well eaten to-day of the spoil of its enemies which it hath found, for now, the smiting hath not been great among the Philistines.'
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.
How much more, if perhaps the people had eaten freely today of the plunder of their enemies which they found? For now has there been no great slaughter among the Philistines.”
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.
How much more if the people had freely taken their food from the goods of those who were fighting against them! would there not have been much greater destruction among the Philistines?
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.
How much more, if perhaps the people had eaten freely today of the plunder of their enemies which they found? for now has there been no great slaughter among the Philistines?
Word-for-word swaps
- haply→perhaps
- day→today
- spoil→plunder
- had→now
- greater→no
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.