ESV Bible Translation Changes in 2025

About nine years ago in 2016, Crossway, the publisher of the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible announced that a series of changes to the ESV would signal the permanent status of that translation. Within a few weeks, it was announced that the permanent status for that revision of the ESV was not-so-permanent anymore. Almost a decade later, now in 2025, Crossway has announced the next set of changes to this popular Bible translation.

The English Standard Version (ESV) was first published in 2001, based on a revision of the Revised Standard Version Bible (RSV), which had been published by the National Council of Churches. The RSV was a revision first completed in the 1950s of the long-standing King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, which dates back to 1611. The RSV was the most popular successor in mainline Protestant churches to the KJV, until the National Council Churches opted to branch out for a major revision in the 1989, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which has now been superseded by the NRSV Updated Edition (NRSVue) in 2022.

The architects behind the ESV thought that the RSV would make a suitable base for a major Bible translation, while tweaking certain elements in the RSV which were perceived to have a progressive theological bias. Since then, the ESV has risen to become the second most popular Bible translation sold in the United States, just behind the New International Version (last revised in 2011), as of 2022. While the KJV is still one of the most used Bible translations among English speakers, the ESV, along with the New International Version (NIV), has become a favorite in English-speaking conservative evangelical churches.

Other translations which appeal to conservative evangelical churches include the New Living Translation (1996), the successor to the Living Bible, and the Christian Standard Bible (2017), the successor to the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

The changes to the ESV in 2025, according to the ESV Translation Oversight Committee, are made up of “text changes to 36 Scripture passages involving 42 verses, resulting in a total of 68 word changes.”

The two most noteworthy changes include Genesis 3:16 and 4:7, which reverses the 2016 change in those verses back to the original 2001 translation. In 2025, the English phrase “contrary to” has reverted back to the original “for.” Egalitarian theologians and even some complementarian theologians disagreed with the 2016 change on this verse, a discussion that has been around for many decades, so it is interesting that the Oversight Committee reversed course to return to the 2001 translation.

The other notable verse is John 1:18, where “the only God” has been updated to “God the only Son.” This addresses the controversy regarding the idea of sonship drawn from the Greek word monogenēs, discussed in the work of the late Old Testament scholar Michael Heiser.

Read all of the ESV 2025 changes here.

Why So Many Bible Translations and Revisions?

English Bible translators have to strike a delicate balance between being faithful to the original Greek and Hebrew manuscript traditions on the one side, with the changing world of the English language on the other. Mix in with that advances in scholarship, this explains why we have so many English Bible translations to begin with.

For example, in the new ESV revision, in several places the phrase “heaven and earth” has been replaced by the more accurate “the heavens and the earth.” What difference does that make? Well, interpretive decisions like this are generally left to those who write commentaries and preach sermons, whereas the text itself is left as it is with some measure of ambiguity.

In recent years, other popular translations of the Bible translation have received minor facelifts. In 2020, the Christian Standard Bible made some changes, including a somewhat controversial change to Romans 3:25, swapping the phrase “atoning sacrifice” with “mercy seat.” (The ESV renders this single Greek word as “propitiation“).

As a young Christian, I grew up mostly with the 1984 NIV, and I know of a few diehards who still use it. But frankly, the NIV 2011, which has not received any update since then, is far more accurate than the 1984 NIV. While the ESV is my main “go-to” translation, the CSB and NIV 2011 translations are not that far behind.

Thankfully, English speakers are blessed to have a multitude of great Bible translations available, where readers can use tools like the online Biblegateway.com to compare how different translations render different passages of the Bible. I make use of such tools like this (and others like the Step Bible) in my own personal study of Scripture. That being said, it is generally helpful to stick with one Bible translation, like the ESV, which reads fairly well, and then consult other translations as needed, in order to double-check our understanding of the text.