"All the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death" (Matthew 27:1): modern readers hear friendly advice-giving, not a death plot.

Matthew 27:1 says the chief priests and elders "took counsel against Jesus to put him to death." A modern reader hears "counsel" and pictures a counselor giving advice, or two sides talking something through. Here it means the opposite: this is the KJV's word for hatching a plan or conspiring. The same phrase appears in Psalm 2:2, where "the rulers take counsel together" against God; that's rebellion being organized, not a policy discussion.

"Counsel" in 1611 covered any deliberation toward a decision, good or bad, from godly advice to a death-plot. Modern English kept the friendly-advice half and mostly dropped the conspiratorial half, so today's readers default to the wrong side of the old meaning.