Translation comparison

2 Kings 13:20 in 6 translations

5 distinct wordings, grouped by what each translation is trying to do. Differences from the King James text are marked below.

Read with nearby context Open chapter 13

Early modern English

Seventeenth-century wording and sentence shape. Familiar, rhythmic, and the version most quotations you have heard are taken from.

King James Version · Darby Bible

KJV

DARBY

These 2 editions word this verse identically.

And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.

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.

American Standard Version

ASV

And Elisha died, and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.

1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.

Young's Literal Translation

YLT

And Elisha dieth, and they bury him, and troops of Moab come in to the land, at the coming in of the year,

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.

World English Bible

WEB

Elisha died, and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.

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.

Bible in Basic English

BBE

And death came to Elisha and they put his body into the earth. Now in the spring of the year, armed bands of Moabites frequently came, overrunning the land.

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.

Elisha died, and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.

Word-for-word swaps

And→Now

The verses either side

King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.

19And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.

20And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.

21And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.

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.