Cam Hyde

Check out my take on the ESV 2025 revisions and what you can do if the update bothers you. Watch the full video below or the transcript is also available.

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Hallelujah and welcome to the Not Another Book or Bible Review Channel, where we take you here and there and everywhere, talking about books and Bibles, doing those reviews. Today is a little bit of the everywhere, because there’s been an announcement that has sent people into an uproar. There’s been a real conundrum going on.

What is that, you might ask? It is the fact that there’s been an announcement made that there is going to be a 2025 update to the ESV, with 60-some changes happening in the text. Very minor, when you consider how many words are in the Bible, but people are going crazy.

Is it because 9 years ago—8 to 9 years ago—there was a revision to the ESV and people are so sad that it’s happening again? I don’t know, but what I want to tell you today, what I want to make clear for you, is that this isn’t a big deal. It’s not time to trash your ESVs from 2016. It’s not going to affect your life that much, and let me share with you a few ways you can handle this—a few things you can do to cope with this change.

What I have here is an ESV. This is a beautiful ESV PSR Personal Size Reference Edition, rebound from Redbird Bibles. Shout out to Redbird! This is a 2016 ESV right here, and it is beautifully done. I would be a fool to get rid of this Bible just because there have been a few changes made.

So let me tell you what you can do: you can go on living your life because that’s okay. This is still the Word of God, just as much as before they announced these revisions. These changes aren’t going to change your life all that much, and you can continue on with your 2016 ESV with confidence. These revisions aren’t going to affect your life in a big way.

Now, here’s another option for you. If this is really going to bother you, you know what you can do? You can take this 2016 edition of the ESV and go through these 60-some instances where they’re making changes, and you can make them yourself. It is okay to write in your Bible! You can go through and make those updates yourself, and boom, you’ve got a 2025 ESV. Now, if you do that before they release the updated edition, you’ll have the very first one! Wow, now you’re a trendsetter. Now you’re on the cutting edge of the ESV translation.

Another thing you can do—this is your last option, and not one I’d suggest if you’re a lover of the ESV like I am—you can just switch translations. If it’s going to bother you that much, you can switch translations. In fact, I’ve seen people who’ve already made the switch when they heard that updates were coming. Maybe you want a more stable text, which means you want a text that isn’t being updated. You could move to something like the New King James, which has a lot of ESV flavor to it, if we’re honest, but also uses different language. There’s nothing wrong with that! The New King James is a great translation; they make a lot of great Bibles. If you want to invest in a Bible that’s going to be a little more stable, then that’s an option for you, and that’s okay too.

We lovers of the ESV will say, “Enjoy your new translation!” Because you know what matters? It is being in the Word of God. Being in the Bible is what matters, so be in a translation that you love to read. The one that makes you want to pick it up and read it—it doesn’t matter if that’s the 2016 edition of the ESV, the King James Version, the New Living Translation, the Christian Standard Bible, or the Berean Standard Bible.

Whatever copy of God’s Word—so long as that translation team was faithful to the original—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you switch translations. Just be in God’s Word, love God’s Word, hide it in your heart, hold fast to it, and seek to love Christ more.

Until next time.