Ezekiel 24:17 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.
Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men.
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.
Sigh, but not aloud, make no mourning for the dead; bind thy headtire upon thee, and put thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Sigh in silence, make no mourning for the dead; bind thy turban upon thee, and put thy sandals upon thy feet, and cover not the beard, and eat not the bread of men.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
Cease to groan, for the dead thou dost make no mourning, thy bonnet bind on thee, and thy shoes thou dost put on thy feet, and thou dost not cover over the upper lip, and bread of men thou dost not eat.'
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.
Sigh, but not aloud. Make no mourning for the dead. Bind your headdress on you, and put your shoes on your feet. Don’t cover your lips, and don’t eat mourner’s bread.”
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.
Let there be no sound of sorrow; make no weeping for your dead, put on your head-dress and your shoes on your feet, let not your lips be covered, and do not take the food of those in grief.
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.
Sigh, but not aloud. make no mourning for the dead, bind your headdress on you, and put your shoes on your feet, Don’t cover your lips, and don’t eat mourner’s bread
Word-for-word swaps
- cry→Sigh
- thee→your
- thy→your
- thy→on
- and→Don’t
- the→mourner’s
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.