Translation comparison

Exodus 3:3 in 6 translations

6 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 3

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 Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

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

ASV

And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.

Darby Bible

DARBY

And Moses said, Let me now turn aside and see this great sight, why the thorn-bush is not burnt.

1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.

Young's Literal Translation

YLT

And Moses saith, `Let me turn aside, I pray thee, and I see this great appearance; wherefore is the bush not burned?'

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

Moses said, “I will go now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

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

And Moses said, I will go and see this strange thing, why the tree is not burned up,

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.

Moses said, I will go now and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

Word-for-word swaps

burnt→burned

The verses either side

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

2And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush not consumed.

3And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

4And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here I.

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.