Lamentations 2:1 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.
How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!
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.
How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger! He hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, And hath not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
How hath the Lord in his anger covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud! He hath cast down from the heavens unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
How doth the Lord cloud in His anger the daughter of Zion, He hath cast from heaven to earth the beauty of Israel, And hath not remembered His footstool in the day of His anger.
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.
How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger! He has cast the beauty of Israel down from heaven to the earth, and hasn’t remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
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.
How has the daughter of Zion been covered with a cloud by the Lord in his wrath! he has sent down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, and has not kept in memory the resting-place of his feet in the day of his wrath.
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.
How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, He has cast the beauty of Israel down from heaven to the earth and hasn’t remembered his footstool in the day of his anger!
Word-for-word swaps
- hath→has
- unto→to
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.