1. How to use a Bible concordance

A concordance is an index of words in the Bible. In this case the index is larger than the original book, because it not only tells where the words are used, it also gives you some context for each occurrence of the words.

The simplest use for a concordance is when you remember a phrase from the Bible (example: “ministry of reconciliation”) and want to know where it occurs. So you could go to the concordance, and look up either “ministry” or “reconciliation,” and scan through the entries until you find the phrase you are looking for. (This is easier on a computer, but some of the problems of using a concordance apply equally to printed and computer versions—so even if you already use a computer concordance, this document still contains things that are relevant to computer Bible study.)

Concordances come in small, medium, and large. Some Bibles have a small concordance in the back. It will list only the most significant words, and only the most significant occurrences, chosen by some unnamed employee at the publishing company. If you are lucky, it will have what you are looking for. But it’s not complete, so even if you find one occurrence of the phrase you are looking for, you can’t know whether there might be another as well.

Cruden’s Complete Concordance is a medium-size concordance, first published in 1737. In very small print, it gives the passage with a small amount of context (shown below). This can help you find passages, but other concordances have additional features that make them better suited for serious Bible study.

The next improvement came more than a century later, with Robert Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Bible (1879). I will say more about it shortly, but first I want to discuss the more commonly used Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, by Augustus Strong (1890). Here is a random portion of it:

In this section, the concordance is indexing the word “pass.” To save space, the word “pass” itself is abbreviated as p^*, but the other words in the context are spelled out. On the right-hand side of each column are various numbers, and this is what has made Strong’s concordance popular. These numbers tell us which Hebrew and Greek words are reflected in the English translation (KJV). Hebrew numbers are in regular type, and Greek numbers are in italic type. Those numbers are used in a concise dictionary in the back of the book, and so with the help of these numbers, you can get to the original languages even if you don’t know them. And that can be dangerous.

In Luke 21:32, we see the phrase “this generation shall not p^* away,” and we see that the word “pass” in that verse is a translation of the Greek word numbered 3928. A different number is given for Luke 16:26, because a different Greek word is used there. No number is given for many of the verses, showing that there is no Hebrew or Greek word corresponding with “pass.” (Most of these are in the phrase “come to pass.” The relevant numbers are given in the listing for “come.”)

Let’s dig a little deeper, and follow one of the Greek words – number 3928. We can go to the back of the book and look it up in Strong’s “Concise Dictionary of the Greek Testament.” Here’s what we see on page 55:

Strong’s Greek number 3928 is the word παρέρχομαι, which is then transliterated as parěrchŏmai, with the pronunciation suggestion as par-erˊ-khom-ahee. (I’ve never heard anyone pronounce the last syllable like that.) Strong then notes that it comes from Greek words he numbered as 3844 and 2064 (the preposition para and the word erchomai). Strong notes that the basic meaning is (in italics) “to come near or aside,” that is, to approach, arrive, go by, go away, perish, neglect, or avert. After the colon dash (:—) are listed, in alphabetical order, the words used in the King James Version to translate this particular Greek word.

Now comes the dangerous part. Strong has dutifully compiled the data. He has listed the facts. They are fairly accurate, although our understanding of the meaning of some Greek words is better now. The question is, what can we do with this information?

Some people, operating from the assumption that a word should be consistent in its meaning, try to use the “literal meaning”[1] in every occurrence in the Bible. In this case, the meaning of the root words para and erchomai is to “come alongside.” If we applied this meaning to Luke 21:32, we would get something like, “This generation will not come alongside…” That would mean that this generation would not reach the point Jesus was describing, which is opposite the normal translation. There are two things wrong with the original assumption: Word meanings are not always based on the root words, and word meanings are not always consistent. The most commonly used words, in most languages, have more than one meaning.
Some people try to combine all the meanings – in this case, perhaps something like “come alongside in order to pass away, with the nuance of transgressing a rule.” Ah, the word is so rich in meaning, they say. So expressive, so meaningful! And they read this expanded meaning into other verses. For example: “Let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). With the expanded meaning, we could turn this into, “Let this cup come alongside me but then go away, although it’s not quite lawful to do it that way.” Jesus would be asking for something that wasn’t quite right, due to the depth of his anguish.

Hopefully, my examples seem fanciful. But I have seen students do similar things with other Greek words, based on Strong’s concordance and some basic ignorance of how languages and dictionaries work. So, here are some basic rules about using the Hebrew and Greek dictionaries in Strong’s concordance:

Do not assume that the root words of a word give you the “real” meaning of the word. The root words are of historical interest for how Greek developed as a language—but if you don’t know Greek, you can’t do much with the historical origin.
Do not assume that one meaning is the “basic” or “literal” meaning, the one that should be preferred. The dictionary lists several meanings because the word indeed has several possible meanings.
Do not mash all the definitions together as if the conglomerate is a better, richer meaning than any of the others. You cannot do that with English words, so don’t do it with Greek or Hebrew. The dictionary lists several meanings, not a conglomeration of them all, because sometimes the word has one meaning, sometimes another, and rarely more than one at the same time.[2]
With most Greek words, the King James translators ended up using several English words – in this case, sometimes “come,” sometimes “pass,” sometimes “transgress,” etc. They knew more about Greek than most of us do. Modern translators know more than we do, too. If you cannot find at least one translation that agrees with your choice of definition, you are going to be wrong 99.99 percent of the time.[3]
When Strong lists several meanings, how are we to know which one is right for our verse? Context! Choose the meaning that works best in the context. In fact, choose the word that adds the least meaning. It is dangerous to put a lot of weight on one particular definition, when other definitions might be equally sensible, unless that meaning is already supported in the context.[4] It is even more dangerous to put a lot of weight on a nuance of grammar.

Ah: grammar. That’s something that a concordance cannot help us with. It can tell us which word is used, but it does not tell us how that word is inflected. Greek prepositions can have one meaning when the object is in the genitive case, and a different meaning with the dative case. The meaning of one word depends on how the other word is spelled! Strong’s cannot tell us that; it has no grammar – and yet grammar is an important part of language, and an important part of word meanings. If you don’t know any Greek grammar, you have to be even more cautious about word meanings.[5]

To sum it up: Strong’s concordance is very useful as an index, but poor as a dictionary. Look at the size: 1340 pages of index, and less than 200 pages of dictionary. The important part is the index.

OK, then, let’s use the index for something more than finding verses. Let’s suppose that you would like to study the word “justification.” Strong’s will tell you every place that the word “justification” is used. And similarly, the verb “justify” and the adjective “just,” etc. You could look up all the verses that use these words, and build your concept of justification on that.

You would probably learn a lot by looking up all those verses, especially if you took the time to study the context, and to see the reasoning involved in the passages. However, your work would still have a logical flaw: you would be basing your work on the verses in which the King James translators thought the meaning was “justification.” They were good translators, but they were not perfect. What if we would like to find out all the places where the relevant Greek word is used? We can use Strong’s Concordance for that.[6]

1. First, go to the main index and look up the word “justification.” It occurs three times, once for Greek word 1345 and twice for Greek word 1347.

2. Then go to the dictionary in the back of the concordance to find out that 1345 is the word dikaiōma, and in the dictionary Strong tells you that this word has also been translated as judgment, ordinance, and righteousness.

3. Then go back to the main index and look for the word judgment. Scan the right part of the column for the number 1345 – that will tell you verses that use the word dikaiōma.

4. Do the same for ordinance and righteousness; you will then have a list of all occurrences of the Greek word dikaiōma and you can study them.

5. Do a similar thing for related words: verbs, adjectives, etc. You will then have a broader base for your word study, and you will not be dependent on the choices made by the King James translators.

Congratulations! You have made it past one hurdle – now there is another. (There is no end of research – there is always “one more thing” that we need.) In this case, it is the assumption that the concept of justification is always conveyed by one of the Greek words that are translated as justification. We really need to research concepts, not just individual words. If justification is synonymous with forgiveness, then we need to study forgiveness as well. Or perhaps we need to study it to see whether it is a synonym, or in what circumstances it is a synonym.

Here’s a different example: In the Old Testament, a covenant was a promise given on oath, or obligations given on oath. In 2 Samuel 7:4-17, God promises to David that he will give him a dynasty. There is no mention of swearing an oath, and the word for covenant is not used. Nevertheless, David understood that a covenant had been made (2 Samuel 23:5). A promise from God was as good as an oath, and so if we want to study God’s covenants with people, we need to be willing to consider the possibility that he made covenants even when the text does not actually use the word covenant.[7] Here we are on the borderline between biblical studies and theology.

Now let’s look at a different concordance. When we want to study the occurrences of a particular Greek word, Young’s Analytical Concordance may be the better book for us. Although the major organization is done by English word, after that it is organized by Hebrew and Greek words. Let us use the word “kind” as an example.

Young tells us that three different Hebrew words are translated as “kind,” and five different Greek words. We show here a part of the page.

Young has organized all the entries by meaning and original word, with brief definitions. But we might still have the question: OK, genos is sometimes translated as “kind” (category 4 in the image at right). But perhaps genos is translated by other words, too. How can we find out? Young includes an index of Greek words in the back, organized by transliteration (thankfully, alphabetized in the English way rather than the Greek). So there we find out that genos is indeed translated in several ways.

So if we’d like to be complete in our study of genos, we would need to look up several more words: diversity, generation, kindred, nation, offspring, one’s own countrymen, stock, born at, born in, of the country of. Each time, we would need to look for the section referencing the Greek word genos.

Perhaps this seems like a lot of back-and-forth work. Yes, it is a lot of work, and some of it is not necessary. If we want to see how the Greek word genos is used, why not get a concordance that is organized by Greek word?

Fortunately, George Wigram created such a book: Englishman’s Greek Concordance of the New Testament (1839). It is alphabetized by Greek word, in Greek order, but the verses are quoted in English.

If you don’t know Greek well, you can use the English index in the back to see which Greek words have been translated as “kind,” and which page numbers they are on. There are also some editions that use Strong’s numbers to help you find the relevant pages. So this is another tool that can help you investigate the use and meaning of particular Greek words. Wigram did a similar concordance for Hebrew in 1843. Below, we show a sample from one of Wigram’s books.

In 1997-98, Zondervan published two similar works based on the NIV translation: The Hebrew-English Concordance to the Old Testament, and The Greek-English Concordance to the New Testament. Everything is alphabetized according to Greek word, so it helps to know the Greek alphabet. But even if you don’t, you can look up English words in an index in the back, find the relevant Greek words, with their reference numbers (the numbering system is different than Strong’s numbers, but there is a cross-reference for those, too), and then turn in the main index to see how the NIV has translated all occurrences of a particular Hebrew or Greek word.[8]

If you want a concordance of the Greek New Testament showing only the Greek words in context, then you can consult W.F. Moulton and A.S. Geden, A Concordance to the Greek Testament (T&T Clark, 1897). A more modern version is Albert Schmoller, Handkonkordanz zum Griechischen Neun Testament (American Bible Society, 1973). The preface is in both German and English; everything else is in Greek.

Printed concordances are available for many modern English translations,[9] but I suspect that fewer will be printed in coming years, because computers do it much better. I’ll have more to say about them later.

Notes

[1] There is no such thing as a “literal meaning.” Words do not have meaning in themselves – they have meaning only in a context. They are phonetic codes to concepts, varying from one language to another—and even within the same language, can vary from one century to another. Word meanings are not based on writing or literacy – words have meaning even when used by the illiterate, and the meaning is based on the way the phonetic codes are used in those social circumstances at the time. Meaning cannot be dictated by an external authority.

[2] “A word, even if it has several meanings, may have only one of them in a particular context” (Lester L. Grabbe, “A Guide to the Use of Greek and Hebrew,” The Bulletin of the Worldwide Church of God and Ambassador College, July 17, 1974, p. 335).

[3] “It is always wise to be wary if your study of the Greek or Hebrew text of a passage comes up with a meaning not given in any lexicon, translation or commentary” (ibid., 334).

[4] “Just because a word ‘can mean’ something does not prove that it ‘does mean’ that in the verse under question. The particular meaning of a word must be determined from its own context, other passages, and idiom” (ibid.).

[5] “You have a responsibility to be conscious of your own limitations and to be very careful about drawing dogmatic conclusions from superficial study of a text in Greek or Hebrew” (ibid., 331).

[6] Strong’s is not the best tool for the job, but it can be done with Strong’s. Although there is sometimes value in doing this work ourselves, we also have to realize that some scholars have already done the work and published the results, as I will discuss a little later. Sometimes we will want to begin our studies where they left off, and sometimes we will want to double-check their work and challenge their conclusions.

[7] In the case of 2 Samuel 7, we do see a formula of mutual relationship: “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (7:14). Similar formulas are associated with God’s covenant with Israel coming out of Egypt (Jeremiah 7:23; Exodus 6:7) and for promises of a future covenant: “I will be their God and they will be my people.” The formula itself may be indicative of a covenant, so if we want to study God’s covenants, we need to take these passages into account as well. That is something I should have done for my dissertation, but didn’t.

[8] These books based on the NIV are currently out of print, perhaps 1) because a new edition of the NIV came out and the concordance needs to be updated, or perhaps 2) computers do this so much better that there is no market for a printed book of this kind.

[9] CEB: Common English Bible Concise Concordance

Douay version: Concordance to the Bible, by Newton Thompson

ESV Comprehensive Concordance of the Bible

French: Concordance de la Bible

Living: The Living Bible Concordance Complete

NAB: New American Bible Revised Edition Concise Concordance

NAS: New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible

NIV Bible Concordance (a shorter version, for the 2011 NIV)

NIV Exhaustive Concordance (for the 1984 NIV)⁵

NKJ: Complete Concordance to the Bible, New King James Version

NLT: New Living Translation Complete Concordance

NRSV: Exhaustive Concordance: New Revised Standard Version

NRSV: The Analytical Concordance to the New Revised Standard…New Testament

NRSV: The NRSV Concordance Unabridged, including the Apocrypha

Spanish: Concordancia Completa Santa Biblia

TEV: Concordance to the Good News Bible

I could not find a concordance for one major translation: the Contemporary English Version.