Translation comparison

Deuteronomy 26:4 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 26

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

And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set it down before the altar of the LORD thy God.

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 · Darby Bible

ASV

DARBY

These 2 editions word this verse identically.

And the priest shall take the basket out of thy hand, and set it down before the altar of Jehovah thy God.

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 the priest hath taken the basket out of thy hand, and placed it before the altar of Jehovah thy God.

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

The priest shall take the basket out of your hand, and set it down before Yahweh your God’s altar.

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

Then the priest will take the basket from your hand and put it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God.

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.

the priest shall take the basket out of your hand, and set it down before Yahweh your God’s altar

Word-for-word swaps

thine→your
the→Yahweh

The verses either side

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

3And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto the LORD thy God, that I am come unto the country which the LORD sware unto our fathers for to give us.

4And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set it down before the altar of the LORD thy God.

5And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian ready to perish my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous:

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.