2 Chronicles 4:16 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.
The pots also, and the shovels, and the fleshhooks, and all their instruments, did Huram his father make to king Solomon for the house of the LORD of bright brass.
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.
The pots also, and the shovels, and the flesh-hooks, and all the vessels thereof, did Huram his father make for king Solomon for the house of Jehovah of bright brass.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And the pots, and the shovels, and the forks, and all their instruments did Huram Abiv make king Solomon for the house of Jehovah, of bright brass.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
and the pots, and the shovels, and the forks, and all their vessels, hath Huram his father made for king Solomon, for the house of Jehovah, of brass purified.
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.
Huram his father also made the pots, the shovels, the forks, and all its vessels for king Solomon, for Yahweh’s house, of bright brass.
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 the pots and the spades and the meat-hooks and their vessels, which Huram, who was as his father, made for King Solomon for the house of the Lord, were of polished brass.
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.
Huram his father also made The pots the shovels, the forks, and all its vessels for king Solomon for Yahweh’s house of bright brass.
Word-for-word swaps
- fleshhooks→forks
- to→its
- the→Yahweh’s
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.