Did the NIV Delete a Verse? The Story About Matthew 17:21
The Mystery of the Missing Verse
A friend texted me the other day asking why his Bible (the New International Version) didn’t have Matthew 17:21. Obviously, the answer is because the NIV is not a "real" Bible translation and shouldn’t be trusted.
I’m joking, but that’s often the answer that’s given.
The real answer is longer and, quite frankly, more interesting. If you read modern translations like the NIV, ESV, or NLT, you’ll notice several places where verses seem to be missing. But if we think of them as "missing," we’re already off on the wrong foot.
We have to ask: Are they missing, or is it possible they shouldn’t have been there in the first place?
How the New Testament was Copied
The New Testament wasn’t created with meticulous editors and copy machines like we have today. Originally, letters and gospels were passed around individually, and people made handwritten copies for themselves and others.
In Matthew’s gospel alone, we’re talking about 19,000 words. With that sort of painstaking copying, errors were inevitable. Those making the copies might:
Misspell a word
Drop a line of text
Mix up the word order
Add a sentence that wasn’t actually there
It is this last error that causes the "missing verse" phenomenon found in Matthew 17.
The "Harmonization" Problem
This was especially prevalent with the gospels. Because Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell similar stories (John does, too, but there’s a reason why Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels), it was easy for a scribe (someone who made handwritten copies of the biblical texts) to mentally "autofill" details.
Imagine a scribe who knows Mark’s gospel by heart sits down to copy Matthew’s gospel. He comes to a story shared by both. He is so familiar with Mark’s wording that he unintentionally writes a sentence from Mark into the manuscript of Matthew.
If that specific copy is used to make more copies, that added sentence becomes part of the tradition in that region.
The Timeline of Translation
Here is how that history impacts your Bible today:
The 1600s: English Bibles (like the King James Version) are mass-produced. However, the Greek manuscripts available to translators at that time were newer copies that included those scribal additions.
The 1900s: Discoveries are made of much older, more reliable manuscripts that do not have the added sentences.
Today: Modern translators (NIV, ESV, CSB) use those older, more reliable manuscripts to get us closer to what the New Testament authors originally wrote.
Why is the verse number skipped?
When you see Matthew 17 skip from verse 20 to verse 22, it isn't because editors are tampering with the Bible. It’s actually the opposite: they are trying to be as accurate as possible.
They don't include the added sentence in the main text because the evidence shows Matthew didn't write it. However, because verse numbers were established centuries ago (in the 1500s), they can't simply re-number the verses. Instead, they skip the number and provide a footnote, usually stating something like this that is found at the end of Matthew 17:20: “Some manuscripts include here words similar to Mark 9:29.”
This is a good thing—a really good thing. Footnotes like this in our Bibles go a long way toward showing that we have access to the most accurate text in history. So, the next time you see a “missing” verse number in your Bible, check the footnote. It’s there you’re seeing biblical manuscript history in action.