I've been using a King James Version pretty much my entire life and still have trouble with some of the words and phrasing. Fortunately I use a Scofield Study Bible, which has so many notes, references, and explanations that I don't need to turn to an external source to clear anything up. But this means that if I sit down to read, I can get through two or three chapters in fifteen to twenty minutes.
My wife recently purchased a Bible, and at my recommendation we bought an English Standard Version, because I had found it very easy to understand and like that it's a word for word translation of the best of the original language texts. Yesterday I gave the ESV a try for my regular reading and found in I Chronicles that I was able to blast through eight chapters instead of the usual three.
So that got me thinking: if you don't need to slow down, check a word's meaning, or really think about what a verse or passage is saying, can you miss an important concept or principle? Should the Bible be just a little confusing to make you stop and consider what's being said?
I have no idea. I just know it felt kind of weird reading so quickly, almost like I expected a divine speeding ticket.
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