Exodus 25:31 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.
And thou shalt make a candlestick pure gold: beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same.
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.
And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made, even its base, and its shaft; its cups, its knops, and its flowers, shall be of one piece with it.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And thou shalt make a lamp-stand of pure gold; [of] beaten work shall the lamp-stand be made: its base and its shaft, its cups, its knobs, and its flowers shall be of the same.
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 thou hast made a candlestick of pure gold, of beaten work is the candlestick made; its base, and its branch, its calyxes, its knops, and its flowers are of the same;
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.
“You shall make a lamp stand of pure gold. Of hammered work shall the lamp stand be made, even its base, its shaft, its cups, its buds, and its flowers, shall be of one piece with it.
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.
And you are to make a support for lights, of the best gold; its base and its pillar are to be of hammered gold; its cups, its buds, and its flowers are to be made of the same metal.
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.
“You shall make a lamp stand of pure gold: Of hammered work shall the lamp stand be made: even its base, its shaft, its cups, its buds, and its flowers, shall be of one piece with it.
Word-for-word swaps
- shalt→You
- candlestick→lamp
- beaten→Of
- his→even
- knops→its
- his→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.