Ezekiel 40:42 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 the four tables were of hewn stone for the burnt offering, of a cubit and an half long, and a cubit and an half broad, and one cubit high: whereupon also they laid the instruments wherewith they slew the burnt offering and the sacrifice.
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 there were four tables for the burnt-offering, of hewn stone, a cubit and a half long, and a cubit and a half broad, and one cubit high; whereupon they laid the instruments wherewith they slew the burnt-offering and the sacrifice.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
and at the ascent, four tables of hewn stone, of a cubit and a half long, and a cubit and a half broad, and one cubit high; whereon also they laid the instruments with which they slew the burnt-offering and the sacrifice.
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 the four tables for burnt-offering are of hewn stone: the length one cubit and a half, and the breadth one cubit and a half, and the height one cubit: on them they place the instruments with which they slaughter the burnt-offering and the sacrifice.
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.
There were four tables for the burnt offering, of cut stone, a cubit and a half long, and a cubit and a half wide, and one cubit high. They laid the instruments with which they killed the burnt offering and the sacrifice on them.
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 there were four tables for the burned offering, made of cut stone, one and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide and a cubit high, where the instruments were placed which were used for putting to death the burned offering and the beasts for the offerings.
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.
There were four tables for the burnt offering, of cut stone, a cubit and a half long, and a cubit and a half wide, and one cubit high: they laid the instruments with which they killed the burnt offering and the sacrifice. on them.
Word-for-word swaps
- the→There
- an→a
- broad→wide
- wherewith→with
- slew→killed
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.