How to Do a Bible Word Study

Bible word studies are very fun and interesting to write as well as to read. The wisdom clarity and consistency through the entire Bible is an amazing thing to see first hand.

Naturally there are many ways to approach a word study of the Bible. I will naturally share the way I have come to do it. I hope you enjoy it!

While it is true that I have studied words with only the word as the starting point. I have found that it is when I have already chosen a topic and am seeking to clarify or go deeper by studying the individual words used in the verses that I am most amazed.

I use the following things to do a word study: A King James Bible. The reason for using a King James Bible is that this is the only version that has a complete Concordance. You may also use whatever Bible you prefer reading but you must find the corresponding word in the KJV to use the concordance.

A Strong’s concordance. This is a complete alphabetical list of all the words in the King James Bible and everywhere they appear. The concordance will give you the original Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament) word that was used for translation. If you know one word in a verse and don’t know where the verse is you could look that word up in a concordance and see a list of every time the word is used and where. To the right of the word you will see a number: Hxxxx for Hebrew and Gxxxx for Greek. These are called Strong’s numbers. If you look up these numbers in the rear of the book you will see the words in their original language followed by: transliteration, pronunciation, definition, and a translation (the definition and the translation are separated by the “:-” symbol.

If you would like further notes or information you can compare Strong’s definition with other books that use a Strong’s number. Below are common reference books that I use in my Bible word study blog to ‘dig a little deeper’.

Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

Vine’s Expository Dictionary

Kittle’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament gives information on how the word was used in Classical and Attic Greek.

Berry’s Greek interlinear New Testament

Strong’s concordance is available online at Eliyah.com. This site has a concordance, lexicons, and dictionaries. It is a great tool.

Sometimes it is interesting to write down the different ways a Greek or Hebrew word is translated into English. I do find though that the most revealing fact in learning a words real meaning is in seeing other places in the Bible that the same word is used. This is very revealing. Especially when you see that: “church” is not a building, “baptism” is not getting a little water on you, and “saint” is not a dead person.