Exodus 7:15 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.
Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river’s brink against he come; and the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take in thine hand.
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.
Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river`s brink to meet him; and the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take in thy hand.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Go unto Pharaoh in the morning behold, he will go out unto the water and take thy stand by the bank of the river in front of him; and take in thy hand the staff that was turned into a serpent.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
go unto Pharaoh in the morning, lo, he is going out to the water, and thou hast stood to meet him by the edge of the River, and the rod which was turned to a serpent thou dost take in thy hand,
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.
Go to Pharaoh in the morning. Behold, he goes out to the water; and you shall stand by the river’s bank to meet him; and the rod which was turned to a serpent you shall take in your hand.
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.
Go to Pharaoh in the morning; when he goes out to the water, you will be waiting for him by the edge of the Nile, with the rod which was turned into a snake in your hand;
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.
Go to Pharaoh in the morning; Behold, he goes out to the water; and you shall stand by the river’s bank to meet him; and the rod which was turned to a serpent you shall take in your hand.
Word-for-word swaps
- unto→Go
- lo→Behold
- goeth→goes
- unto→to
- shalt→you
- come→bank
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.