Luke 17:27 in 8 translations
7 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.
They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
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.
They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
they ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all [of them];
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were given in marriage, till the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the deluge came, and destroyed all;
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.
They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
These 2 editions word this verse identically.
They were eating and drinking and marrying and being married, up to the very day on which Noah entered the ark, and then the flood came and destroyed them all.
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
Simplified English
Built from a deliberately small vocabulary so the sense stays reachable for new readers and non-native speakers. Trades nuance for clarity.
They were feasting and taking wives and getting married, till the day of the overflowing of the waters, when Noah went into the ark, and they all came to destruction.
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.
They ate, they drank, they married they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
Word-for-word swaps
- eat→ate
- Noe→Noah
- ark→ship
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.