Isaiah 42:7 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.
To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.
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.
to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
to open the blind eyes, to bring forth the prisoner from the prison, them that sit in darkness out of the house of restraint.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
To open the eyes of the blind, To bring forth from prison the bound one, From the house of restraint those sitting in darkness.
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.
to open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon, and those who sit in darkness out of the prison.
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.
To give eyes to the blind, to make free the prisoners from the prison, to let out those who are shut up in the dark.
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.
To open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon, and those who sit in darkness out of the prison
Word-for-word swaps
- from→out
- that→dungeon
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.