2 Kings 10:7 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.
And it came to pass, when the letter came to them, that they took the king’s sons, and slew seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent him them to Jezreel.
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.
And it came to pass, when the letter came to them, that they took the king`s sons, and slew them, even seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them unto him to Jezreel.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And it came to pass when the letter came to them, that they took the king's sons, and slaughtered seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him to Jizreel.
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 it cometh to pass, at the coming in of the letter unto them, that they take the sons of the king, and slaughter seventy men, and put their heads in baskets, and send unto him to Jezreel,
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.
When the letter came to them, they took the king’s sons and killed them, even seventy people, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him to Jezreel.
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.
And when the letter came to them, they took the king's sons and put them to death, all the seventy, and put their heads in baskets and sent them to him at Jezreel.
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.
when the letter came to them, they took the king’s sons, and killed them, even seventy people, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him to Jezreel.
Word-for-word swaps
- slew→killed
- persons→people
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.