Revelation 19:17 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.
And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
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 I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid heaven, Come [and] be gathered together unto the great supper of God;
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven, Come, gather yourselves to the great supper of God,
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 I saw one messenger standing in the sun, and he cried, a great voice, saying to all the birds that are flying in mid-heaven, `Come and be gathered together to the supper of the great God,
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.
I saw an angel standing in the sun. He cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the sky, “Come! Be gathered together to the great supper of God,
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
Then I saw an angel standing on the sun. He cried in a loud voice to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven – ‘Gather and come to the great feast of God,
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
Then I saw an angel standing on the sun. He cried in a loud voice to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven – “Gather and come to the great feast of God,
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.
And I saw an angel taking his place in the sun; and he was crying with a loud voice, saying to all the birds in flight in the heavens, Come together to the great feast of God;
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.
I saw an angel standing in the sun; he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the sky, Come Be gathered together to the great supper of God;
Word-for-word swaps
- fowls→birds
- heaven→sky
- yourselves→Be
- unto→to
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.