“The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible…” For generations, preachers like Charles Spurgeon insisted that every word of Scripture mattered. Then, in 1631, one missing word proved just how right they were.

In 1631, King Charles I commissioned a standard reprint of 1,000 copies of the King James Bible from printer Robert Barker. Barker completed the task, but about a year after its distribution, the Bishop of London brought to the king’s attention an error that Charles found both theologically and morally abhorrent.

“Not” is such a small word, just three letters. Yet its entire purpose is to change a sentence. In this case, the word “not” was omitted from the Seventh Commandment in Exodus 20, essentially reading, “Thou shall commit adultery,” giving this edition its infamous name, the Wicked Bible of 1631.

King Charles I was livid, fining Barker £300, an amount equivalent to the price of an entire farm at the time. The king also ordered all 1,000 Bibles burned. Not every copy was destroyed, however; 11 are known to still exist today.

While that was the most egregious error, there were others, including a notable mistake in Deuteronomy 5:24, which read, “Behold, the Lord our God hath shewed us his glory and his asse,” where the final word should have been “greatness.” While “asse” was not considered obscene at the time, describing God as a donkey in the officially approved Bible was hardly acceptable to authorities.

Those three missing letters ended Barker’s printing business, and he lived the rest of his days in poverty.

History remembers it as the “Wicked Bible,” though the fault was never in the Word itself, only in the ink that carried it. One missing “not” was enough to turn a command into a contradiction and the printing into a scandal.

It’s the kind of mistake that might earn a quiet chuckle today, if it hadn’t come at such a cost. But it also leaves us with a lasting reminder: every word of Scripture matters. Because as it turns out, leaving out a single word can change everything. And while few of us will ever print a Bible, we are all capable of something similar; softening a command, skipping a hard truth or reshaping Scripture to better fit our lives.

The printers of 1631 lost a “not.”

We would do well to make sure we don’t.