A Strong's Concordance app for iPhone
A Strong’s Concordance turns “what does this word mean in the original?” into something you can actually answer without knowing Greek or Hebrew: every original word gets a number, and that number links a plain-English gloss, a lexicon entry, and a list of every verse the word appears in. The classic version is a doorstop of a book. On an iPhone it should be three taps. Often it is a website you have to load first.
Here is how a Strong’s Concordance works as an app in Scribe, and where it lands against the free web tools.
Tap a word, get its Strong’s number
Every word in the Berean Standard Bible (BSB) and Majority Standard Bible (MSB) is tagged with its Strong’s number — H#### for Hebrew, G#### for Greek. Tap one while you read and a panel opens with the original token, its transliteration, the Strong’s number, and a brief gloss. No separate concordance to open, no reference to type in. (New to the numbering itself? The plain-English guide to Strong’s Concordance explains H- and G-numbers from scratch.)
The concordance move: trace a word across Scripture
A single definition is a snapshot; the concordance is the whole picture. From the word panel, tap through to the concordance and Scribe lists every verse where that Strong’s number appears — so you can see how a word is actually used across books and authors, which is the classic study move Strong’s exists for. It runs on-device, so the lookup is instant and works with no signal.
More than a gloss — the full lexicon behind the number
This is where an app can go past the printed concordance. Where Strong’s gives a short definition, Scribe puts the full Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ) lexicon behind Greek words and Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) behind Hebrew, so the number is a doorway to the real scholarly entry, not a dead end. Hebrew morphology is decoded into plain English as well (“Qal Perfect 3ms” becomes readable); Greek parsing is not decoded.
Honest comparison: the free web tools
You do not have to pay for Strong’s. Blue Letter Bible and STEP Bible both offer excellent Strong’s tools for free — in a browser. That is their strength and their catch: they assume a connection, and on a phone a tap opens a separate panel or a new page. Scribe’s angle is narrower and specific: the same Strong’s-to-lexicon-to-concordance loop, offline, in a native app, in place — no page load between you and the next verse.
| Free web Strong’s tools | Scribe (iPhone) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free reading; word study unlocks with Scholar |
| Works offline | Online-first | Fully bundled — no network |
| Tap-a-word | Opens a panel/page | In place, no page load |
| Behind the number | Strong’s + Thayer’s / Gesenius | Full LSJ (Greek) & BDB (Hebrew) |
| Tagged translations | Varies | BSB & MSB |
What it costs
Reading nine translations and searching all 14 is free forever. The Strong’s word study, the LSJ/BDB lexicons, and the concordance unlock with Scholar — a one-time $59.99 or $4.99/month, no account. If your study mostly happens on a phone and you are tired of loading a website to look up a number, that is the gap this fills. The full Greek and Hebrew word-study walkthrough shows the whole loop end to end.