What is the simplest, clearest interpretation of the English text of the Authorized Version on Romans 9:5?

The subject is the Israelites.

• for the sake of my countrymen
• my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites
• to whom belongs
• whose are the fathers
• from whom is the Christ

God blessed the Israelites forever.

The promises God made with Abraham carry on toward eternity - all the nations will be blessed in him - through Christ (forever). Gen 22:18

But especially the chosen nation - God's 'firstborn' (Ex 4:22) are the first to receive His blessings. (and the first to be held accountable also)

God (be/is) blessed for ever...by creation, his people, or Paul
(Christ is) God (who is) blessed for ever...by creation, his people Paul
Christ.. (is) .. God blessed for ever... God blesses Christ

The adjectival construction is descriptive and uses "blessed" in the sense of "praised, extolled, honored in worship." The added notations above presuppose a verbal (subject-verb-object) construction in all three cases.

The subject is the Israelites.

In the English text of the AV, as "who is" (rather than "who are") is singular, so Israelites cannot be the subject. This reading only applies to the conjectural emendation of the Greek text, from ὁ ὢν (a singular participle) to ὧν ὁ (a plural relative), in order to make Ἰσραηλῖται (Israelites) the subject, and no evidence supports this.

(Christ is) God (who is) blessed for ever

In this reading, "God" has the function of an appositive, thus identifying Christ as "God." After this, "Blessed" forms a predicate adjectival construction involving an elliptical clause ("blessed for ever" = "who is blessed for ever). We would pronounce it adjectivally as God bles-sed, not the verbally as God blest.

This is how the passage in the AV is read by the vast majority of English commentators, and this sense is unanimous among the Greek and Latin fathers as well as the ancient versions. How it relates to the Greek text is also well documented among the English commentators. The attributive participle ὁ ὢν (being = "who is") forms a relative, equative clause that is making an assertion about the subject, ὁ Χριστὸς (Christ), with ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς forming the predicate. Thus Christ is said to be both ἐπὶ πάντων (over all) and θεὸς (God), suggesting the translation "God over all" or "over all, God." Because πάντων is neuter (all things) and that distinction is lost in English, the solution found in the AV, "over all, God" removes the potential misreading that Christ is over even the Father.

God (be/is) blessed for ever...

This text is not supported by the English of the AV; introducing a new subject without a linking verb before the predicate would result in a fragment. This reading only belongs to translations that follow the conjecture that a period should be placed before or after "over all," under the stated assumption that Paul would not call Christ "God."

Christ.. (is) .. God blessed for ever... God blesses Christ

As Lucian says, this would be a hapax translation, meaning there's no precedence for it. It is actually a misunderstanding of the English text, reading the adjective "blessed" (bles-sed) as its past participle verbal form "blessed" (blest) and taking them together as a compound adjective. The Greek does not support this, therefore we should not understand a different meaning in English. In Greek, when we find a nominative noun and nominative adjective juxtaposed as in Romans 9:5, one is the subject and the other is the predicate; θεὸς (God) cannot act in that way ("God blesses Christ") on εὐλογητὸς (blessed). Here, εὐλογητὸς is the predicate (it lacks the article). A predicate adjective describes the subject. So "Christ . . . who is God" is said to be "blessed for ever."

I hope this is helpful to all!

please do not consider:

• Greek source punctuation

How about Greek source word order ? It seems pretty obvious that, within the original Greek text,

by replacing the final o on from the middle of verse 5 with on o, and taking into consideration that, within that passage, the pronoun always seems to refer to the Jews, a very uniform flow of ideas seems to emerge:

who are Israelites, whose [is] the sonship, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law, and the worship, and the promises; whose [are] the [fore]fathers, and from whom [is] the Christ, the [one] after [the] flesh; whose [is] the above-all God, blessed into the ages, amen.

please do not consider:

• doctrinal preferences

I'm Eastern Orthodox; however, I would not, in good conscience, feel comfortable invoking said passage in an attempt to support Christ's divinity.

Please give me your natural reading of this English language Bible verse from the Authorized Version.

the purpose here is to work directly with the text of the Authorized Version, as written, from an English grammar approach.

My natural reading would be that the aforementioned passage, English or otherwise, contains a doxology to God, regardless whether it is Christ, or the Father, or both, the language of Shakespeare faring neither better nor worse than others, in terms of clarity vs. ambivalence, with regards to this specific text.

Now, since the translators in question, as myself, were Trinitarian Christians, the intended meaning was, most likely, the Trinitarian one. This view is also (strongly) supported by the scholarly answer to the above-linked question, based directly on the original Greek; see the paragraphs numbered (1) to (5).

"God blessed" would be acting as a compound adjective for Christ

Doubtful; in that particular situation, the most likely English rendering would have been blessed by God; indeed, it would be a translational hapax, were that truly the case, which I highly doubt.

Back in 1898 Robert Young completed his third edition of his literal translation of the Bible. He worked from the text of the Authorised Version (also called the King James Version). He stuck strictly to a literal translation; no changing of words, no softening of words or passages, just translating strictly as it was written in the original languages. Almost 60 years of study and work lay behind this. He did not intend for his literal translation to replace or compete with the KJV. It uses the same Elizabethian English that the KJV used but the word order is different from the KJV. In my quote from his rendition, also bear in mind that words in square brackets [ ] indicate a word that is not actually in the Greek text (for Romans 9:5):

"...whose [are] the fathers, and of whom [is] the Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed to the ages. Amen." Robert Young's Literal Translation of the Bible

Another very old translation is "The Companion Bible" which states that it is not a new translation, nor is it an amended translation. It adds:

"The Text is that of the Authorized Version of 1611 as published by the Revisers in their 'Parallel Bible' in 1885." Acts 9:5 reads (with italics indicating a word not actually in the text) -

"...whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen."

These are simple, natural clear readings in English, working from the A.V. However, if you then want interpretations of such readings, that requires a different question which would be suited to the Biblical Hermeneutics site, and (to fit its criteria) you would need to quote such renditions before asking how they should be interpreted (understood).