Jeremiah 48:15 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.
Moab is spoiled, and gone up out of her cities, and his chosen young men are gone down to the slaughter, saith the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.
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.
Moab is laid waste, and they are gone up into his cities, and his chosen young men are gone down to the slaughter, saith the King, whose name is Jehovah of hosts.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Moab is laid waste, and his cities are gone up [in smoke], and his chosen young men are gone down to the slaughter, saith the King, whose name is Jehovah of hosts.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
Spoiled is Moab, and her cities hath one gone up, And the choice of its young men Have gone down to slaughter, An affirmation of the King, Jehovah of Hosts is His name.
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.
Moab is laid waste, and they have gone up into his cities, and his chosen young men have gone down to the slaughter,” says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies.
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.
He who makes Moab waste has gone up against her; and the best of her young men have gone down to their death, says the King, whose name is the Lord of armies.
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.
Moab is laid waste, and they have gone up into his cities, and his chosen young men have gone down to the slaughter, says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies.
Word-for-word swaps
- spoiled→laid
- her→into
- are→have
- saith→says
- LORD→Yahweh
- hosts→Armies
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.