Leviticus 13:28 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.
And if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not in the skin, but it be somewhat dark; it is a rising of the burning, and the priest shall pronounce him clean: for it is an inflammation of the burning.
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.
And if the bright spot stay in its place, and be not spread in the skin, but be dim; it is the rising of the burning, and the priest shall pronounce him clean: for it is the scar of the burning.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
But if the bright spot have remained in its place, [and] not spread in the skin, and is pale, it is the rising of the inflammation; and the priest shall pronounce him clean; for it is the scar of the inflammation.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
`And if the bright spot stay in its place, it hath not spread in the skin, and is become weak; a rising of the burning it is, and the priest hath pronounced him clean; for it is inflammation of the burning.
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.
If the bright spot stays in its place, and hasn’t spread in the skin, but is faded, it is the swelling from the burn, and the priest shall pronounce him clean; for it is the scar from the burn.
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.
And if the bright place keeps the same size and gets no greater on the skin, but is less bright, it is the effect of the burn, and the priest will say that he is clean: it is the mark of the burn.
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.
if the bright spot stays in its place, and hasn’t spread in the skin, but is faded, it is the swelling from the burn, and the priest shall pronounce him clean: for it is the scar from the burn.
Word-for-word swaps
- stay→stays
- his→its
- dark→is
- burning→swelling
- burning→scar
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.