Local Bible societies were set up in the various provinces of the Netherlands and they were united as the NBG on 29 June 1814 on the initiative of the BFBS.

[1] The mission of the NBG was deliberately limited to the distribution of Bibles and literature with the work of evangelism being left to other agencies.

The NBG appointed two colporteurs in 1890 specially for distribution in the countryside where the Bible was often difficult to obtain by laypeople.

[1] Over time the 17th century Statenvertaling had become less accessible to the general public due to the evolution and development of the Dutch language as well as the advances made in biblical scholarship.

Earlier attempts in the 19th century to revised the Statenvertaling were not successful and in 1911 a group of scholars decided to embark on a new translation of the Bible in Dutch that would be translated from Greek manuscripts considered more reliable than the Textus Receptus while staying faithful to the idiomatic style of the Statenvertaling that the majority of Dutch Christians were familiar with.

[3] A new English translation of the New Testament using the principle of dynamic equivalence had been published in 1966 by the American Bible Society.

As Dutch society rapidly secularised after the Second World War, many felt that a translation based on similar principles was needed.

This revision was primarily a linguistic adaptation with modernised spelling used without any further substantial changes and was published in 1977 as the Statenvertaling 1977 (also known as the Tukkervertaling or Tukker Translation).

[9] Not long after its establishment, the NBG also turned its attention to the distribution of the Bible in the Dutch East Indies.

In 1823, the NBG had also started its own initiative in translating the Bible into Javanese and other local languages of the East Indies.

[10][1] The NBG also sponsored other linguists and translators, including Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk (Batak), Nicolaus Adriani (Bare'e), Benjamin Frederik Matthes (Makassarese and Bugis), and Hendrik Kraemer.