Problems with the ESV

The ESV is becoming quite popular and a lot of people speak very highly of it. But popularity doesn’t make something right. The real question is, “Can it be trusted”.
It is true that the ESV is becoming quite popular. In fact, it has been listed as one of the top-selling Bible translations since at least 2014. In the last 15 years, an estimated 200,000,000 copies have been sold world-wide. I would say that’s popular! 
The ESV was released in 2001, with minor revisions being released in 2007, 2011, and 2016.
From their web site:
The English Standard Version (ESV) is an "essentially literal" translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Created by a team of more than 100 leading evangelical scholars and pastors, the ESV Bible emphasizes "word-for-word" accuracy, literary excellence, and depth of meaning.
Not long ago, the ESV Translation Oversight Committee decided that they had brought their translation to the point where it was good enough to stop working on. In their words:
“the ESV Bible will remain unchanged in all future editions printed and published by Crossway—in much the same way that the King James Version (KJV) has remained unchanged ever since the final KJV text was established almost 250 years ago (in 1769).” 
They are calling their final revision the “Permanent Text of the ESV Bible”. This final revision included changes to 52 words found in 29 verses.
The foundation for their translation work was the Revised Standard Version (RSV) which was translated from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in the Old Testament and the Critical Greek Text in the New Testament.
So the Translators of the ESV basically took the RSV and tweaked it to be more of a formal equivalent translation (they call it “optimal equivalence”) of these same original language texts. Also, in their own words, there were occasions when they consulted  the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, and a few other things to “shed light” on the Old Testament Hebrew text.
So, the essential and most basic problem is that it is based upon inferior Hebrew and Greek texts. 
It’s ironic that they actually claim to be following in the tradition of the Tyndale translation and the KJV. This isn’t even remotely possible since the ESV is by all intents and purposes, nothing more than a revision of a translation based upon different Hebrew and Greek texts. A good number of scholars have basically come to the same conclusion. And yet, rather than address the elephant in the room, the ESV publishers just quietly ignore this fact.
Since the ESV is not based on the Textus Receptus, we should expect to find differences. And indeed we do. There are quite a number of verses that you will find in the KJV which are just not in the ESV. The reason is because those same verses are not in the Critical text from which the ESV was translated.
There are also phrases missing in quite a number of other verses. There are several lists available on the internet, if you are interested but I wanted to address a few which I believe are more critical:
Mathew 19:9  And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.  KJV
And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.  ESV
This is critical because without this phrase, one could conclude that it is acceptable to married a woman who was divorced when Jesus clearly said otherwise. We may debate what the conditions are all day long. But we cannot simply remove the phrase.
Mark 1:2 (ESV) – As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,
What’s the problem here, you ask? It’s not written in Isaiah. But that's what the Critical Text says so rather than do it what we like to call, "the right way", they went with it.

John 3:13  And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.  KJV
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  ESV 
This is an unfortunate deletion because the phrase teaches us the omnipresence of Christ. He was sitting down with Nicodemus when he said this. And he clearly said that he was in heaven. I don’t know of any other verse from the earthly ministry of Christ that makes this as clear as we see it here.
John 7:8 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for My time is not yet full come.
You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come.
The absence of that little word “yet” makes Jesus a liar in the ESV because in the ESV, Jesus told his brothers he wasn’t going to the feast and then later he went.
One of the more plain errors of the ESV is the fact that Elhanan is said to be the slayer of Goliath in 2 Samuel 21:19, even though any child who attended Sunday school knows that it was David. The reason for this translation error is that the faulty ESV Greek textual basis reads so. So if your Bible says Elhanan killed Goliath, that’s an error, even it clarifies it in a footnote.
One of the more controversial changes, which was actually debated quite strongly, was Genesis 3:16.
The ESV translators changed their earlier translation from “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you,” to “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
Of course the KJV says, “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee”.
The ESV sets it in stone that the woman, all women, will always have a naturally tendency to be contrary to the husband. And that is simply not what the Hebrew states.
I had originally thought that the ESV avoided gender neutral language but that is not always the case. The danger? Formal equivalence.
So, in summery, there are some negative things about the ESV almost all of them are textual, meaning, it is because the foundation is different. Some are translational. But none of the changes are warranted.
Nuff said?