Revelation 8:4 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.
And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.
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 the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel`s hand.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And the smoke of the incense went up with the prayers of the saints, out of the hand of the angel before 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 go up did the smoke of the perfumes to the prayers of the saints out of the hand of the messenger, before 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.
The smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.
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.
The smoke of the incense ascended, with the prayers of Christ’s people, from the hand of the angel before God.
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.
And the smoke of the perfume, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel's hand.
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 smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.
Word-for-word swaps
- ascended→went
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.