I was in high school when I finished reading the Bible for the first time. Once I finished, I intended to start over again, but I also wanted to start studying the Bible. I didn’t really have an idea of how to do that, so I asked a friend whom I knew had studied the Bible for many years. He suggested a tool called Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. That resource took me to a new level.
Strong’s Concordance was the creation of Dr. James Strong (1822–1894), an American biblical scholar. Strong was a professor of biblical literature at Troy University in New York (1858–1861) and Drew Theological Seminary (1868–1894) in New Jersey. He first published his now famous concordance in 1890.
What exactly is a concordance? In simplest terms, it is an alphabetical listing of every word in an English translation along with a verse reference for that word. In the case of Strong’s Concordance, the version he used was the King James Version. For example, you could use Strong’s Concordance to look up the English word “love” and quickly see which verses have “love” in the Bible.
Strong’s Concordance is more than a list, though. Strong, and a staff of over a hundred people who helped create the concordance, also created a numbering system for the Hebrew and Greek words behind the English translation. Using the word “love” again as our example, Strong’s numbering system informs us that the Hebrew verb most often translated “love” was assigned the number 157. The Greek word most commonly translated “love” received the number 26. These numbers were used to create a dictionary in the back of the concordance. After finding the number, which appear sequentially, you will find a short definition that Strong and his assistants created for the Hebrew or Greek word corresponding to that number. Therefore, Strong’s Concordance has an index of every word of the Bible in its original language.
Strong’s numbering system has proved so popular and enduring that many biblical reference tools for helping English readers study Hebrew and Greek word meanings have adopted the system. Strong’s Concordance is still in print, as are updated systems like the GK numbers. But in today’s world of personal computers, print concordances have been superseded by digital versions and more powerful tools. Whether you use books or a computer, learning about concordance numbers can move you in a new direction for Bible study.