Slide 1

How to Use Concordances for

Word Studies

BC502 Hermeneutics

Fall 2009

Huntington University Graduate

Ministry Program

Prepared by Scott Stocking

Using an English Concordance

• An English concordance allows you to look up an

English word that occurs in a particular version of the

Bible and find all its occurrences in that version.

• Most popular are Strong’s (KJV) and NIV Exhaustive

Concordance (NIVEC). Many computer and Internet

Bible programs use the “search” feature to function

as a concordance.

• The following slide is a section taken from the “obey”

entry in the NIV Exhaustive Concordance. We will

follow the word “obey” and the Greek word from

which it is translated in Hebrew 13:17–18.

A portion of the “obey” entry from the NIVEC

•The boldface “o” indicates that this is where the word

“obey” appears in the text. The first letter of the headword

is always used in this way in the main concordance. Other

words that are translated from the Greek word appear in

boldface (e.g., James 3:3). Helper words (e.g., “do”) or words

implied by the grammar (e.g., “for”) are in italics (1 Peter

4:17).

Other features of NIVEC

• Each entry line is called a “context line.”

• The number at the end of the line is a cross reference to

the dictionary at the back of the concordance (see later

slide). NIG (“not in Greek”) means that the word in the

English text is not represented by a word in the Greek

text. In the case of Hebrews 13:17, this is done because

the English translators broke up one Greek sentence

into two English sentences. NIH means “not in Hebrew”.

• An italic number indicates a Greek word for New

Testament passages. A roman (not italic) number

indicates a Hebrew word for an Old Testament passage.

For “obey” in Hebrews 13:17, the number is 4275.

• Two or more numbers connected with a “+” sign

indicate that those words together translate the

boldfaced words in the context line.

Other features of the NIVEC

• The head word for each entry indicates the

number of occurrences of the English word in the

entire Bible version and any related English words.

• “Obey” occurs 165 times in the Bible, and its

related forms with separate listings are

“obedience, obedient, obeyed, obeying, obeys.”

• Note that when you look up a related form, it

references back to “obey” as the main word in that

family of words.

Looking up the Greek Word

• In the NIVEC, if you turn to the “Greek-English

Dictionary” in the back section and look for 4275,

you will find this:

Explaining the Dictionary Entry

• The dictionary entry begins with the number

followed by the word spelled out in Greek (or

Hebrew) characters and an English

transliteration [Greek/Hebrew-symbol-for-

English-letter(s) equivalent].

• When referencing a Greek or Hebrew word in

a research paper, use the transliteration at a

minimum, including the special characters (ē,

ō). Do not use the number to reference the

word!

• The entry continues with a part of speech and

the total number of occurrences of the Greek

or Hebrew word in the Bible. Because a Greek

or Hebrew word will not always be translated

into the same English word every time it

occurs, this count will usually not agree with

the English word count.

Explaining the Dictionary Entry

• An arrow (→) indicates that the Greek or

Hebrew word is a root or base word (usually a

verb, unless no verb form occurs in the Bible).

The numbers that follow refer to the words

derived from that root or base. Analyzing the

word family can be an important aspect of

word study, especially when studying an

infrequently used word.

• A root symbol (√) indicates that the word’s

root is located at that number. More than one

number after a root symbol indicates that the

word is a compound.

Explaining the Dictionary Entry

• After the root or related words, a general

dictionary definition is given.

• After the dictionary definition, the different

translations of the Greek or Hebrew word in

the NIV are listed in order of frequency, with

the frequency count for each translation in

parentheses.

• As with the main entry, a “+#” indicates more

than one Greek or Hebrew word was used to

translate the English word or phrase.

Why is this important?

• One of the most important reasons to utilize a

concordance is to perform a “word study” on key

words in your target text.

• A concordance helps you see the “range of

meaning” of a particular Greek or Hebrew word,

that is, what is the broad usage of the word

throughout a testament.

• A word study helps you decide which one of those

meanings was the author’s intended meaning in

your target passage. A biblical author rarely uses a

word to imply more than one meaning, and he

certainly doesn’t intend to suggest that the reader

can choose from the different meanings, as the

Amplified Bible suggests.

Expediting the Process

• As you might imagine, it could get rather

involved looking up each English word in the

translation list in the NIVEC and trying to find

the specific verses that have that word

number.

• A much easier way would be to use a Greek-

English or Hebrew-English concordance with

English context lines. Sample entries from the

Greek-English Concordance (based on the NIV)

for peithō (4275) follow.

The Whole Entry

The Greek-English Concordance

• Note that the first part of the GEC entry is

almost identical to the NIVEC dictionary entry,

minus the part of speech and the general

dictionary definition. The general dictionary

definition is found in the back of the GEC with

other information.

The Greek-English Concordance

• Words are listed in order by number, so you don’t have

to know the Greek or Hebrew alphabets to quickly find

a word.

• Notice in the whole entry that all the verses where the

Greek word occurs are listed, with the English

translation of the word in bold, and helper words in

italics. This saves you the step of having to look up all

the English words separately in an English-only

concordance.

• The word/phrase translated from the Greek word is in

boldface; helper words are in italics.

• As with the NIVEC, [+#] indicates one or more words

were used together to make the one translation.

The Greek-English Concordance

• The dictionary in the Greek-English

Concordance offers a general dictionary

definition for each word, followed by cross-

references to other Greek dictionaries or

lexicons.

• Read the user’s guide at the front of the GEC

to understand what the different

abbreviations mean.

The Greek-English Concordance

• Note the placement of the accent mark on the two words. Make

sure you get the correct number! The first entry says “variant,” so

that is probably not used in the regular body of the Greek text.

• S = Strong’s concordance number

• BAGD = A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (2

edition,

green binding; 3

edition has been published with a maroon

binding). The page number and page quadrant (A, B, C, D, top to

bottom, left to right) are given.

• CB = Colin Brown’s The New International Dictionary of New

Testament Theology index volume, (usually volume 4) page number

and column number; index entry tells all the places a discussion of

that word can be found. An abridged version of this work is

available already keyed to the NIV numbering system.

The Greek English Concordance

• If you want a summary of all

the Greek words that

translate to a specific

English word, you can get

that information from the

Index in the back of the

GEC. This essentially “sorts”

the NIVEC main entry by

frequency of Greek word.

• RPE means the word did not

occur in Greek, but the

English word was needed

for clarity.

Blueletterbible.org

• The Web site www.blueletterbible.org has an

excellent setup to explore the Greek and Hebrew

behind the English text.

• When you go to the Web site, type in any verse.

You will see a series of boxes next to each verse.

Click the “C” box, and the Greek or Hebrew text

will open, with all forms parsed and with all

words (in the Strong’s numbering system;

different from the NIV numbers) hyperlinked.

• When you click the Strong’s number, you will get

a Greek-English Concordance-style listing.

Blueletterbible.org

• Note that when you click a word number, you get

Strong’s outlined definition of the word, a lexicon

(Thayer’s) entry, and a list of all complete verses in

which the word occurs.

• Note that the count in a KJV bible might be different

than in a NIV translation because each uses a different

underlying Greek texts.

• Note the “continue” option allows you to access all of

the verses in blocks of 20 or so. On the screen shot on

the left in the previous slide, note the access to

different study materials based on this passage.

• This Web site has much to offer. Explore!