Daniel 4:21 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.
Whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the fowls of the heaven had their habitation:
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.
whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was food for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the birds of the heavens had their habitation:
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
whose leaves were beautiful, and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and in whose branches the birds of the heavens had their habitation:
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 its leaves are fair, and its budding great, and food for all is in it, under it dwell doth the beast of the field, and on its boughs sit do the birds of the heavens.
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.
whose leaves were beautiful, and its fruit plentiful, and in it was food for all; under which the animals of the field lived, and on whose branches the birds of the sky had their habitation:
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.
Which had fair leaves and much fruit, and had in it food for all; under which the beasts of the field were living, and in the branches of which the birds of heaven had their resting-places:
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.
Whose leaves were beautiful, and its fruit plentiful, and in it was food for all; under which the animals of the field lived, and on whose branches the birds of the sky had their habitation:
Word-for-word swaps
- fair→beautiful
- the→its
- much→plentiful
- meat→food
- beasts→animals
- dwelt→lived
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.