Translation comparison

Ezra 9:10 in 6 translations

5 distinct wordings, grouped by what each translation is trying to do. Differences from the King James text are marked below.

Read with nearby context Open chapter 9

Early modern English

Seventeenth-century wording and sentence shape. Familiar, rhythmic, and the version most quotations you have heard are taken from.

King James Version · American Standard Version

KJV

ASV

These 2 editions word this verse identically.

And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? for we have forsaken thy commandments,

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.

Darby Bible

DARBY

And now, what shall we say, our God, after this? for we have forsaken thy commandments,

1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.

Young's Literal Translation

YLT

`And now, what do we say, O our God, after this? for we have forsaken Thy commands,

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.

World English Bible

WEB

“Now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments,

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.

Bible in Basic English

BBE

And now, O our God, what are we to say after this? for we have not kept your laws,

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.

now, our God, what shall we say after this? for we have forsaken your commandments,

Word-for-word swaps

thy→your

The verses either side

King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.

9For we were bondmen; yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the desolations thereof, and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem.

10And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? for we have forsaken thy commandments,

11Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness.

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.