Numbers 11:8 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.
the people went about, and gathered and ground in mills, or beat in a mortar, and baked in pans, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.
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.
The people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in mortars, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
The people went about, and gathered it, and ground it with hand-mills, or beat it in mortars, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was as the taste of oil-cakes.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
the people have turned aside and gathered it, and ground it with millstones, or beat it in a mortar, and boiled it in a pan, and made it cakes, and its taste hath been as the taste of the moisture of oil.
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.
The people went around, gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in mortars, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it. Its taste was like the taste of fresh oil.
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.
The people went about taking it up from the earth, crushing it between stones or hammering it to powder, and boiling it in pots, and they made cakes of it: its taste was like the taste of cakes cooked with oil.
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.
the people went around, gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in mortars, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it: Its taste was like the taste of fresh oil.
Word-for-word swaps
- and→around
- mortar→mortars
- baked→boiled
- pans→pots
- the→Its
- as→like
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.