One of the complaints about older versions of the Bible (such as the Authorized Version, along with others) is the presence of the old words – specifically, “thee”, “thou”, and “thy”.

In fact, I used to think that there would be nothing wrong with updating such Bibles to remove these — until I learned better.

In case you didn’t know, “thee”, “thou”, and “thy” are the old words for the second person singular. The words for the second person plural were “you”, “ye”, and “your”. English no longer differentiates between them – we only use “you” and “your”, and it could be either singular or plural.

What I didn’t know until recently is that “thee”, “thou”, and “thy” were already out of date when the Authorized Version was translated; the translators deliberately brought these words in so that readers could tell from the word whether one individual was being addressed or multiple individuals.

There are lots of cases to show this, but I recently ran across this one in Matt 20:20-23

Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able.

Note that Jesus said to her, “What wilt thou?” This one one person with a request, and the singular is used. But note that after her request, Jesus said “Ye know not what ye ask.” The mother may have asked the question, but it was to her two sons that He replied. This would not be as clear if the text just used “you”.