[I realize that many of my readers are not Christians and do not read the Bible, but for those of you that do read it, you might find this method of Bible study enlightening.]
How to Do a Bible Word Study/Bible Word Study Tools
Sometimes when I’m reading the Bible, I’m curious to know exactly what a word means in the verse that I am reading. While I’m not a Greek or Hebrew scholar (the languages that the Bible was originally written in), I have found it helpful to look up the meanings of words in the original Greek or Hebrew to gain more insight into a passage I’m reading.
The Strong’s Concordance is a reference book which correlates every word in the Old and New Testament with a description in English of it’s meaning. Words in the Old Testament were given numbers starting with an H for Hebrew. Words in the New Testament were given a number with G in front of it for Greek. (The concordance is based on the King James Version of the Bible, so you will need to use that version so that the words correlate. You can then read the passage or verse in another version if you choose.)
You can now access this large volume using online tools. Here is a breakdown of what I do when I want to do a word study of a Bible verse.
Please Note: Use of these links does not imply my endorsement of other material on these sites. I have simply found these tools to be useful.
Links were live at the time of publication.
Pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to you as you study.
Invite God to speak to you personally as you study His Word.
Go here and select the chapter and verse(s) that you want to research. Click “Search”.
Check the box in front of the word “Strong’s”.
This will bring up the numbers which correspond to the Greek and Hebrew words in the Strong’s Concordance. Note: The verse will come up in the King James version because that is the version of the Bible that Strong used when writing the concordance. If you would like to compare your verse in different versions of the Bible, go here and enter the chapter and verse, then select the version of the Bible you would like to read the verse in.
Find the Strong’s Concordance number at the end of the word(s) you want to research.
Words from the New Testament will have a number starting with “G” for Greek (the language in which the New Testament was written). Words from the Old Testament will have a number starting with “H” for Hebrew (the language in which the Old Testament was written).
For example, the word “love” in this passage is number G25.
If the concordance numbers are not clickable on your screen, go here and enter the Strong’s number without the “G” or “H”. Then select Greek if the number had a “G” in front of it, or Hebrew if the number had an “H” in front of it.
In our example, you would enter 25 and select Greek.
Read the definition.
You can see that agapao is the Greek word and it means “to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly“.
In English, we have only one word for “love”, while Greek has several words. This shades of meaning are unlocked as we look at the definition in Greek, and we can see that God welcomes us into His family and loves us dearly. That’s why He gave His Son Jesus to die for us.
Rewrite the verse in your own words.
After I find the original meaning of the words, I prayerfully rewrite the verse in a way that encompasses what I’ve learned.
For our example verse I would write something like this:
For God so dearly loved and felt so fondly of the world (and me) that He gave His only Son to die for me.
This gives me insight into the fact that God doesn’t just love me, He welcomes me and loves me dearly (and the rest of the people in the world). The word “fond” gives me a warm feeling of God’s love toward me.
I hope that you can use these tools to find insights into God’s Word that bring you even closer to Jesus.
It takes time, but digging into the Bible is so worth the effort. As I have studied the Scriptures in a deeper way, I’ve become closer to Jesus and learned secrets that I never knew before. I don’t want to just read the words in the Bible, I want them to change my life.
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