Ezekiel 43:22 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 on the second day thou shalt offer a kid of the goats without blemish for a sin offering; and they shall cleanse the altar, as they did cleanse it with the bullock.
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 on the second day thou shalt offer a he-goat without blemish for a sin-offering; and they shall cleanse the altar, as they did cleanse it with the bullock.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And on the second day thou shalt present a he-goat without blemish for a sin-offering; and they shall purge the altar, as they purged it with the bullock.
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 on the second day thou dost bring near a kid of the goats, a perfect one, for a sin-offering, and they have cleansed the altar, as they cleansed it for the bullock.
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.
“On the second day you shall offer a male goat without defect for a sin offering; and they shall cleanse the altar, as they cleansed it with the bull.
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 on the second day you are to have a he-goat without any mark on it offered for a sin-offering; and they are to make the altar clean as they did with the young ox.
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.
on the second day you shall offer a male goat without defect for a sin offering; and they shall cleanse the altar, as they cleansed it with the bull.
Word-for-word swaps
- shalt→you
- goats→male
- blemish→defect
- cleanse→cleansed
- bullock→bull
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.