Hebrews 2:7 in 8 translations
8 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.
Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands:
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.
Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with glory and honor, And didst set him over the works of thy hands:
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Thou hast made him some little inferior to the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, [and hast set him over the works of thy hands;]
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
Thou didst make him some little less than messengers, with glory and honour Thou didst crown him, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands,
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.
You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
You have made them, for a while, lower than angels; with glory and honor you have crowned them; you have set them over all that your hands have made;
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
You have made them, for a while, lower than angels; with glory and honour you have crowned them; you have set them over all that your hands have made;
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · The Commonwealth spelling edition of the Open English Bible. Identical wording to the US edition apart from spelling.
Simplified English
Built from a deliberately small vocabulary so the sense stays reachable for new readers and non-native speakers. Trades nuance for clarity.
You made him a little lower than the angels; you gave him a crown of glory and honour, and made him ruler over all the works of your hands:
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.
You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor.
Word-for-word swaps
- madest→You
- crownedst→You
- hands→honor
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.