Luke 3:5 in 8 translations
8 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.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;
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.
Every valley shall be filled, And every mountain and hill shall be brought low; And the crooked shall become straight, And the rough ways smooth;
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Every gorge shall be filled up, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked [places] shall become a straight [path], and the rough places smooth ways,
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straightness, and the rough become smooth ways;
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.
Every valley will be filled. Every mountain and hill will be brought low. The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
Every chasm will be filled, every mountain and hill will be leveled. The winding ways will be straightened, the rough roads made smooth,
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
Every chasm will be filled, every mountain and hill will be levelled. The winding ways will be straightened, the rough roads made smooth,
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · The Commonwealth spelling edition of the Open English Bible. Identical wording to the US edition apart from spelling.
Simplified English
Built from a deliberately small vocabulary so the sense stays reachable for new readers and non-native speakers. Trades nuance for clarity.
Every valley will be lifted up, and all the mountains and hills made low, and the twisted will be made straight, and the rough ways smooth;
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.
Every valley will be filled, every mountain and hill will be brought low; the crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth;
Word-for-word swaps
- shall→will
- made→will
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.