Amos 6:12 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.
Shall horses run upon the rock? will one plow there with oxen? for ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock:
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.
Shall horses run upon the rock? will one plow [there] with oxen? that ye have turned justice into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood;
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Shall horses run upon the rock? will [men] plough [thereon] with oxen? For ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood,
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
Do horses run on a rock? Doth one plough it with oxen? For ye have turned to gall judgment, And the fruit of righteousness to wormwood.
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.
Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness;
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
Do horses gallop on crags? Does one plow the sea with oxen? Yet you turn justice into poison weed, and the fruit of righteousness into bitter wormwood.
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
Do horses gallop on crags? Does one plough the sea with oxen? Yet you turn justice into poison weed, and the fruit of righteousness into bitter wormwood.
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.
Is it possible for horses to go running on the rock? may the sea be ploughed with oxen? for the right to be turned by you into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into a bitter plant?
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.
Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness;
Word-for-word swaps
- Shall→Do
- upon→on
- will→rocky
- ye→But
- judgment→justice
- gall→poison
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.