Psalms 17:1 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.
Hear the right, O LORD, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my prayer, not out of feigned lips.
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.
Hear the right, O Jehovah, attend unto my cry; Give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
{A Prayer of David.} Hear the right, O Jehovah, attend unto my cry; give ear unto my prayer, which is not out of feigned lips.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
A Prayer of David. Hear, O Jehovah, righteousness, attend my cry, Give ear to my prayer, without lips of deceit.
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.
Hear, Yahweh, my righteous plea; Give ear to my prayer, that doesn’t go out of deceitful lips.
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.
Listen, O Lord, to my innocence; attend to my piercing cry. Give heed to my prayer out of lips unfeigned.
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.
<A Prayer. Of David.> Let my cause come to your ears, O Lord, give attention to my cry; give ear to my prayer which goes not out from false lips.
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.
Hear Yahweh, my righteous plea; give ear to my prayer, that doesn’t go out of deceitful lips.
Word-for-word swaps
- unto→Yahweh
- cry→righteous
- unto→to
- not→that
- feigned→deceitful
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.