Exodus 12:9 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.
Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.
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.
Eat not of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roast with fire; its head with its legs and with the inwards thereof.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Ye shall eat none of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roast with fire; its head with its legs and with its in-wards.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
ye do not eat of it raw, or boiled at all in water, but roast with fire, its head with its legs, and with its inwards;
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.
Don’t eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire; with its head, its legs and its inner parts.
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.
Do not take it uncooked or cooked with boiling water, but let it be cooked in the oven; its head with its legs and its inside parts.
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.
Don’t Eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire; with its head, its legs, and its inner parts.
Word-for-word swaps
- sodden→boiled
- roast→roasted
- his→its
- thereof→its
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.