NASB Bible Verse of the Day

About the New American Standard Bible

The New American Standard Bible is generally regarded as the most literal, word-for-word English translation in wide use today — which is exactly what its translators set out to build: a text that follows the original Hebrew and Greek sentence structure, verb tense and word choice as closely as English grammar allows, even when that makes the phrasing less smooth. First published in 1971 and revised most recently in 2020, it is the translation seminary students and pastors often reach for when the precise wording of a passage, not just its general meaning, is under discussion. That precision has a cost: NASB sentences can run long and clause-heavy, and its strict literalism occasionally produces English that feels stiff next to the NIV or NLT. But for word studies, cross-references and any reading where you want to know as closely as possible what the original text actually says, rather than a translator's best paraphrase of it, the NASB remains a standard reference — more common on a study desk next to a concordance than as a casual daily-reading translation.