Deuteronomy 3:5 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.
All these cities fenced with high walls, gates, and bars; beside unwalled towns a great many.
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.
All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars; besides the unwalled towns a great many.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
All these cities were fortified with high walls, gates, and bars; besides unwalled towns very many.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
All these are cities fenced with high walls, two-leaved doors and bar, apart from cities of villages very many;
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.
All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars; besides a great many villages without walls.
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.
All these towns had high walls round them with doors and locks; and in addition we took a great number of unwalled towns.
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.
All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars; besides a great many. villages without walls.
Word-for-word swaps
- fenced→fortified
- towns→besides
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.