Ezekiel 17:3 in 6 translations
6 distinct wordings, grouped by what each translation is trying to do. Differences from the King James text are marked below.
Early modern English
Seventeenth-century wording and sentence shape. Familiar, rhythmic, and the version most quotations you have heard are taken from.
And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; A great eagle with great wings, longwinged, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the cedar:
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 say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: A great eagle with great wings and long pinions, full of feathers, which had divers colors, came unto Lebanon, and took the top of the cedar:
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: A great eagle with great wings, long-pinioned, full of feathers, which was of divers colours, came unto Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the cedar.
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 said: Thus said the Lord Jehovah: The great eagle, great-winged, long-pinioned, Full of feathers, that hath diverse colours, Hath come in unto Lebanon, And it taketh the foliage of the cedar,
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.
and say, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh: “A great eagle with great wings and long feathers, full of feathers, which had various colors, came to Lebanon, and took the top of the cedar.
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 say, This is what the Lord has said: A great eagle with great wings, full of long feathers of different colours, came to Lebanon, and took the top of the cedar:
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.
And say, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: A great eagle with great wings, and long feathers, full of feathers, which had various colors, came to Lebanon, and took the top of the cedar:
Word-for-word swaps
- saith→says
- GOD→Yahweh
- longwinged→and
- colours→various
- unto→to
- branch→top
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.