Numbers 31:3 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 Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the LORD of Midian.
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 Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm ye men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian, to execute Jehovah`s vengeance on Midian.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And Moses spoke to the people, saying, Arm from amongst you men for military service, that they go against Midian to execute Jehovah's vengeance upon Midian.
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 Moses speaketh unto the people, saying, `Be ye armed some of you for the host, and they are against Midian, to put the vengeance of Jehovah on Midian;
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.
Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian, to execute Yahweh’s vengeance on Midian.
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.
So Moses said to the people, Let men from among you be armed for war to put into effect against Midian the Lord's punishment on them.
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.
Moses spoke to the people, saying, Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian. to execute Yahweh’s vengeance on Midian.
Word-for-word swaps
- unto→spoke
- unto→men
- them→that
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.