What is a Bible concordance? A plain guide
By The Scribe Team ·
If you have ever wanted to find “that verse about the peace that passes understanding” — or to see every place the Bible uses the word grace — the tool for the job is a Bible concordance. It is one of the oldest study aids there is, and on a phone it stops being a doorstop and becomes a tap.
What is a Bible concordance?
A Bible concordance is an alphabetical index of the words used in the Bible, listing every verse where each word appears. Think of the index at the back of a textbook, scaled to all 66 books: look up a word, get the list of references. Its two jobs are simple — find a half-remembered verse by a word you do remember, and trace a word across everywhere Scripture uses it. The first concordances were compiled by hand in the 13th century; the famous English ones arrived in the 1700s and 1800s.
Exhaustive, complete, and abridged concordances
Not every Bible concordance indexes every word — and the label usually tells you which kind you have:
- Exhaustive — indexes every word in the Bible, including small words like and or the. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890) is the best-known.
- Complete — indexes essentially all meaningful words but may skip the most common ones. Cruden’s Complete Concordance (1737) is the classic.
- Abridged / concise — a shorter index of the major words only, the kind often bound into the back of a study Bible.
They are also keyed to a translation. A concordance built for the KJV indexes the KJV’s wording, so the word you search has to match the version you are reading — one reason a concordance built into the app you read in is easier than a separate book.
What makes a Strong’s concordance different?
Most concordances index the English words. A Strong’s concordance adds a second layer: it assigns every original Hebrew and Greek word a number — H#### for Hebrew, G#### for Greek — so you can follow an English word back to the specific original word behind it. That number is a key, not a definition; its value is what it unlocks — a lexicon entry and every other verse that uses the same original word. If you want the deeper version of this, see what Strong’s Concordance is and how to use it, and why a Strong’s number alone isn’t the whole story.
How do you use a Bible concordance for study?
Two moves do most of the work:
- Find a verse from a word. Remember one distinctive word in the verse, look it up, and scan the reference list until the phrase clicks.
- Trace a word across Scripture. Read every verse that uses the same word and watch how its meaning is shaped by context — the classic word-study move a concordance exists for.
The second move is where a Strong’s-numbered concordance earns its keep: it traces the original word, not just the English one, so you are following the actual Greek or Hebrew term even when translators rendered it several different ways.
A Bible concordance you tap, fully offline
On paper this meant flipping between a concordance volume and a lexicon. In Scribe it is built into the reading experience, on your phone, with no connection required. Two layers, mapped to the two moves above:
- Find any word — free. Full-text search runs across all 14 translations, so looking up every verse that uses an English word is the free, English-side concordance, no account needed.
- Trace the original word — with Scholar. Every word in the Berean Standard Bible (BSB) and Majority Standard Bible (MSB) is tagged with its Strong’s number. Tap one and Scribe shows the original token, the full Liddell-Scott-Jones (Greek) or Brown-Driver-Briggs (Hebrew) definition, and every verse that Strong’s number appears in — the exhaustive concordance move, on-device and instant. This word-study layer is part of the Scholar tier.
Scholar unlocks two ways — a one-time $59.99 USD purchase you own forever, or a $4.99/month subscription — and a 30-day full-unlock trial opens everything with no card. After the trial, reading nine translations and searching all fourteen stays free. The dedicated Strong’s Concordance app page walks through the tap-a-word loop in full, and the pricing breakdown has the numbers.
Free for 30 days, everything unlocked — no card, no account.