Since the NLT’s initial release, the translation team has spent thousands of hours carefully refining and sharpening it to be even more faithful to the original texts. The result is a new standard in Bible translations—with a scholarly precision that is perfectly suited for serious study. And the warmth, clarity, and living language that are the hallmarks of the New Living Translation.

TRANSLATION OF DIFFICULT TERMS IS MADE MORE CONCISE. In the NLT, difficult terms are often made easier to understand by expanding them into longer phrases. The second edition often shortens these expansions—without sacrificing clarity. For example, traditional translations use the term propitiation in Romans 3:25. The original NLT uses an entire phrase to translate that term, but the second edition improves the level of precision by making it more concise.

LITERARY CHARACTER IS PRESERVED. The original Bible text often repeats words or phrases for literary effect. Where these repetitions don’t add additional meaning, the original NLToften condensed them. The NLT second edition restores many of the repetitions to show the English reader the literary flavor of the original text. For example, the Hebrew term for "hand" is repeated in Exodus 3:19-20. The underlying meaning was appropriately captured in the first edition, but the second edition makes the repetition explicit for the benefit of the English reader.

POETRY LOOKS AND READS LIKE POETRY. To make the message as clear as possible, the original NLT often translated Hebrew poetry as prose. Now those passages have been reset and reworded as beautiful poetry, just like the original text.

WORDING IS MORE CONSISTENT. In the NLT second edition, a particular Hebrew or Greek word is more consistently translated with the same English word wherever the word has the same meaning—making the entire translation more consistent for serious study. For example, the Greek word for "abide" or "remain" is used seven times in John 15:4-7. The original NLT used four different words or phrases, but the NLT second edition consistently uses "remain."