Corn

NIV's continued use of the word 'corn' (31x in 27 verses) is in most cases technically correct but can be confusing for modern readers.

The English word 'corn' originally meant any hard seeds of the cereals, and then came to refer to the plant itself. So, in England, e.g., the word was used of wheat, in Scotland and Ireland, of oats, and later in North America, of maize. North American marketing ploys have, however, so closely associated the word with maize (Zea mays) that, in most parts of the world, maize is what people understand when they read the word 'corn.' Maize is native to the Americas (first domesticated in Mexico), and was not known to the Old World until Christopher Columbus became the first European to set eyes on it. It, therefore, had nothing to do with what is mentioned in the Bible.

None of the occasions where the NIV has used 'corn' needs such a translation, as evidenced by the other modern translations (neither the NRS nor the NKJ uses it). The word 'corn' was widely used in the KJV (102x). Published in the early 17th Cent, the word posed no problem for its readers. To do so in the modern context is to miss an important contextual point.