Psalms 7:5 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.
Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah.
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.
Let the enemy pursue my soul, and overtake it; Yea, let him tread my life down to the earth, And lay my glory in the dust. Selah
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
Let the enemy pursue after my soul, and take [it], and let him tread down my life to the earth, and lay my glory in the dust. Selah.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
An enemy pursueth my soul, and overtaketh, And treadeth down to the earth my life, And my honour placeth in the dust. Selah.
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.
let the enemy pursue my soul, and overtake it; yes, let him tread my life down to the earth, and lay my glory in the dust. Selah.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
may the enemy chase and find me, trample my life to the ground, my honor leave in the dirt!Selah
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
may the enemy chase and find me, trample my life to the ground, my honour leave in the dirt!Selah
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.
Let my hater go after my soul and take it; let my life be crushed to the earth, and my honour into the dust. (Selah.)
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.
Let the enemy pursue my soul, and overtake it; yes, let him tread my life down to the earth, and lay my glory in the dust. Selah.
Word-for-word swaps
- persecute→pursue
- yea→overtake
- upon→down
- honour→my
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.