What a Bible lexicon is (and which ones)
By The Scribe Team ·
A Bible lexicon is a scholarly dictionary of the Bible’s original languages — Biblical Greek and Hebrew — that lays out a word’s full range of meaning, its usage across the literature, and its etymology. It is not a topical dictionary and not a one-line gloss. Ask what a word like agape or hesed actually meant, across every context it appears in, and a lexicon is the reference that answers you. This post explains what a Bible lexicon is, names the major ones, and shows how it differs from the tools people often confuse it with.
Lexicon vs dictionary vs concordance vs Strong’s
These four words get used interchangeably, and they are not the same thing.
| Tool | What it does | Organised by |
|---|---|---|
| Lexicon | Full meaning, senses, usage, etymology of original-language words | Greek/Hebrew word |
| Bible dictionary | Explains topics, people, places, events (“Who was Melchizedek?”) | Subject/entry |
| Concordance | Indexes where each word appears in Scripture | English or original word |
| Strong’s | Numbering key with a brief gloss for each original word | Strong’s number |
A Bible dictionary answers “what is the Sabbath?” — it is about subjects, not vocabulary. A concordance is an index: it tells you every verse a word occurs in, which is a “where,” not a “what.” (See what a Bible concordance is for the full picture.) And Strong’s — the reference most people meet first — is really a numbering system: it assigns every Greek and Hebrew word a number and attaches a short gloss. That gloss is a starting point, not a definition with range. The difference matters enough that we wrote a whole post on why Strong’s isn’t enough for Greek word study.
A lexicon is the deep end of that pool. Where Strong’s says “love,” a lexicon walks you through the senses a word carries, the shades it takes in different constructions, and the passages that document each one.
The major Greek lexicons
For New Testament and Septuagint Greek, three names come up again and again:
- Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ). The great comprehensive lexicon of ancient Greek — classical, Koine, papyri, and Septuagint usage — with citations behind every sense. It is the reference serious desktop study software leans on, and its unabridged text is public domain.
- Thayer’s. An older (1889) Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament, still widely used and freely available. Dated in places, but a real lexicon with range, not a gloss.
- BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich). The modern scholarly standard for New Testament Greek. It is excellent — and it is copyrighted, so it does not appear in free tools (including Scribe). If you see an app claim “the standard Greek lexicon” for free, it is not BDAG.
The major Hebrew lexicons
On the Hebrew side, two names dominate:
- Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB). The standard scholarly lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, first published in 1906 and still the reference most seminaries teach from. It organises words by their Hebrew root and gives each its full range of senses with verse citations. Its copyright has expired, so faithful digitizations of the unabridged text are public domain.
- Gesenius. Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, the nineteenth-century work that BDB itself grew out of. Foundational, still cited, also public domain.
Naming matters. Plenty of apps offer a “Hebrew definition” without saying which lexicon it came from — and the honest answer is usually a gloss derived from Strong’s, not BDB or Gesenius.
How Scribe puts a lexicon behind a tapped word
Scribe is an offline Bible-study app, and its word study is built on two named, full lexicons: the complete Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ) for Greek and the unabridged Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) for Hebrew. Both are the actual public-domain texts, bundled on-device, not “based on” summaries.
Here is how you reach them. Two of Scribe’s 14 translations — the Berean Standard Bible (BSB) and the Majority Standard Bible (MSB) — are tagged word-by-word with Strong’s numbers. Tap a word in either one and a study panel opens with the original Greek or Hebrew token, its transliteration, the Strong’s number and gloss, and the full LSJ or BDB entry — right where you were reading. Tap through to the concordance to see every verse the same word occurs in. There is no separate lookup step; the lexicon comes to the word.
A few honest limits, because a real lexicon tool names them:
- Word study runs on the BSB and MSB only — the two tagged translations, not all 14. The rest are for reading and full-text search.
- Hebrew morphology is decoded into plain English (“Qal Perfect 3ms” becomes readable); Greek parsing is not decoded. Greek word study still gives you the Strong’s number and the full LSJ entry — you just do not get the parsing spelled out.
- There is no readable side-by-side original-language text. The Greek and Hebrew live at the word level, in a tap-driven interlinear, not as a parallel column you read straight through.
Scribe ships LSJ and BDB — it does not include BDAG, Thayer’s, or Gesenius. That is the honest scope: the two comprehensive public-domain lexicons, in full.
Reading, free; the lexicons, Scholar
Reading is free — 9 of the 14 translations, with full-text search across all 14, no account, offline. The lexicons and the rest of word study unlock with Scholar: a one-time $59.99 USD or $4.99/month, with a 30-day full trial that needs no card. Scribe runs on iOS and Android, entirely offline.
If you want the app-specific angle — how a Greek and Hebrew lexicon app should name its sources — see our LSJ-and-BDB lexicon app post. To start from Strong’s, the Strong’s concordance app page covers the numbering side. Or explore the whole word study feature to see the lexicon, concordance, and morphology together.
Free for 30 days, everything unlocked — no card, no account.