“Oh come to the water, all you who are thirsty,” God entreats in Isaiah 55 in the Jerusalem Bible (JB) translation, a cry of longing and abundance and welcome into the new covenant. “Though you have no money, come!”

Or rather, he used to entreat, because soon this poetic recollection of the promises made to David will, at Masses in Scotland, England and Wales, give way to the more prosaic – and, proponents say, more accurate – translation of the English Standard Version (ESV).

The Scottish bishops’ decision earlier this month to drop the JB translation from the lectionary and replace it with the ESV is not a surprise, and follows a similar decision by the bishops of England and Wales. But that does not mean it is good news. Look what the ESV does to Isaiah 55: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money come, buy and eat.”