Translation comparison

2 Kings 4:7 in 6 translations

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

Read with nearby context Open chapter 4

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

KJV

Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.

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

Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy sons of the rest.

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

Darby Bible

DARBY

And she came and told the man of God; and he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou [and] thy sons on the rest.

1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.

Young's Literal Translation

YLT

And she cometh and declareth to the man of God, and he saith, `Go, sell the oil, and repay thy loan; and thou and thy sons do live of the rest.'

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

Then she came and told the man of God. He said, “Go, sell the oil, and pay your debt; and you and your sons live on the rest.”

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

So she came to the man of God and gave him word of what she had done. And he said, Go and get money for the oil and make payment of your debt, and let the rest be for the needs of yourself and your sons.

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.

Then she came and told the man of God. he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay your debt, and you and your sons live on the rest.

Word-for-word swaps

thy→your
thou→you
of→your

The verses either side

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

6And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed.

7Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.

8And it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a great woman; and she constrained him to eat bread. And so it was, that as oft as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread.

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.