2 Thessalonians 3:8 in 8 translations
8 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.
Neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you:
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.
neither did we eat bread for nought at any man`s hand, but in labor and travail, working night and day, that we might not burden any of you:
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
nor have we eaten bread from any one without cost; but in toil and hardship working night and day not to be chargeable to any one of you:
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
nor for nought did we eat bread of any one, but in labour and in travail, night and day working, not to be chargeable to any of you;
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.
neither did we eat bread from anyone’s hand without paying for it, but in labor and travail worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you;
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it. Night and day, laboring and toiling, we used to work at our trades, so as not to be a burden on any of you.
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it. Night and day, labouring and toiling, we used to work at our trades, so as not to be a burden on any of you.
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · The Commonwealth spelling edition of the Open English Bible. Identical wording to the US edition apart from spelling.
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 we did not take food from any man for nothing, but were working hard night and day not to be a trouble to any of you:
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.
Neither did we eat bread from anyone’s hand without paying for it, but in labor and travail worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you:
Word-for-word swaps
- nought→it
- labour→in
- to→burden
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.