A Greek & Hebrew lexicon app for iOS (LSJ and BDB)

By The Scribe Team · 9 July 2026

There is a quiet tell that separates a real study tool from a casual Bible app: whether it names the lexicon. Plenty of apps offer a “Greek dictionary” or a “Hebrew definition.” Ask which lexicon and the answer is usually a thin gloss — a one-line meaning derived from Strong’s, not the scholarly reference itself.

If you are looking for a Greek and Hebrew lexicon app, that distinction is the whole thing. Here is what Scribe uses and how it works.

The lexicons Scribe actually names: LSJ and BDB

For Greek, Scribe puts the full Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ) lexicon behind a tapped word — the standard reference for ancient Greek, the same one serious desktop software relies on. For Hebrew, it uses the unabridged Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB). Alongside each, it shows the shorter TBESG (Greek) and TBESH (Hebrew) glosses for a quick read, so you can skim the short definition or drop into the full entry.

That is the difference from a “Greek dictionary”: you are reading the lexicon scholars cite, with its range of senses and usage, not a single English equivalent flattened out of it. This is where a Strong’s number stops being enough.

How you reach it: tap a word

You do not search a separate dictionary. Every word in the Berean Standard Bible (BSB) and Majority Standard Bible (MSB) is tagged with its Strong’s number; tap 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 are reading. Tap through to the concordance to see every verse the same Strong’s number appears in.

What is the BDB lexicon?

Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) is 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 one its full range of senses, with citations to the verses where each sense appears — which is exactly what a one-line gloss can’t do. Because its copyright has expired, faithful digitizations of the unabridged text are public domain, and that is what Scribe ships: the complete BDB entry, on-device, opened by tapping a Hebrew-backed word in the BSB or MSB. There is no separate lookup step and no abridged “based on BDB” summary standing in for the real entry. The glossary has the short version, alongside LSJ, its Greek counterpart.

Be clear about the limits

An honest lexicon app tells you what it does not do:

• Word study runs on the BSB and MSB, the two tagged translations — not on all 14. The others are for reading and 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 on tap — 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.

LSJ and BDB on iOS, at a glance

Where the sources come from

Credibility is in the provenance. Scribe’s Greek lexicons (TBESG, LSJ) come from STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), the unabridged BDB from a public-domain digitization, and Hebrew morphology from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (CC BY 4.0). These are the same open scholarly datasets the better study tools draw on.

The lexicons unlock with Scholar — a one-time $59.99 or $4.99/month — and, like everything else, are bundled on-device so they work with no connection. If you want to see the whole word-study flow in action, the how-to on Greek and Hebrew word study walks through it tap by tap, and the word study feature page lays out the rest.

Free for 30 days, everything unlocked — no card, no account.