Misinterpretation in KJV (VII)

The KJV contains several other significant mistranslations that merit theological examination, particularly where rendering choices obscure biblical meaning or create doctrinal confusion.

Psalm 12:7: Pronoun Antecedent Error

The KJV renders Psalm 12:7 as “Thou shalt keep them” when contextually and grammatically the pronoun should refer to people, not words[1]. The theological implication is substantial: God’s promise concerns preserving His people through generations, not merely preserving textual accuracy. The KJV’s error shifts focus from God’s covenantal protection of His community to an abstract notion of textual preservation—a fundamental misalignment with the psalmist’s intent.

Acts 12:4: Anachronistic Translation

In Acts 12:4, the Hebrew word for Passover is actually translated as “Easter” even though in every other place it is translated as “Passover” by the KJV, some 28 times[1]. This inconsistency introduces theological confusion by substituting a Christian ecclesiastical term for a Jewish festival, obscuring the continuity between Old Testament redemptive history and New Testament fulfillment. Easter carries post-biblical theological baggage that distorts the passage’s meaning.

Psalm 77:2: Metaphorical Misinterpretation

The KJV renders “My sore ran in the night” when it should be “my hand was stretched out”[1]. The original conveys the psalmist’s posture of desperate prayer—an extended hand reaching toward God—whereas the KJV’s rendering suggests physical illness, fundamentally altering the passage’s spiritual significance.

Inconsistent Word Translation

The Hebrew term “dabhar” (a word or thing) is rendered by eighty-four separate English words, “panim” (face) by thirty-four, and “sim” (to set or place) by fifty-nine[1]. The seventeenth-century translators, for all their learning, had a rather imperfect grasp of biblical Hebrew, and at times they get confused about the syntax, and they repeatedly miss the nuance, or even the actual meaning, of Hebrew words[2]. This inconsistency forces readers to interpret contextually rather than rely on consistent theological vocabulary.

Poetic Compression Loss

In Psalm 23, the KJV renders “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” with seventeen words and twenty syllables, whereas the Hebrew original contains eight words and thirteen syllables[2]. The power of biblical poetry inheres in its terrific compactness, and the King James translators, attached to a more orotund and expansive Jacobean rhetoric, rarely produce English equivalents of this compactness[2]. This expansion dilutes the emotional intensity and theological force of the original.

[1] John Ankerberg and John Weldon, The Facts on the King James Only Debate (Chattanooga, TN: ATRI Publishing, 2011). [See here, here, here, here.]
[2] Robert Alter, The Art of Bible Translation (Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020), 7–9.