"Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."
— Acts 17:11
Quick Answer
A concordance is an alphabetical index of every occurrence of a word in the Bible, letting you find every verse containing a particular term and, in versions like Strong’s Concordance, the original Hebrew or Greek word behind it. It’s a tool for finding passages, tracing themes, and studying word meaning in context, always used alongside careful reading rather than in place of it (Acts 17:11).
A Tool for the ‘Where Was That Verse?’ Moment
Every Bible reader eventually hits the same wall: you remember a phrase, or half a verse, or a story, but you cannot for the life of you locate it. Maybe you recall that somewhere Paul talks about being ‘content in whatever circumstances,’ but you don’t remember the book or chapter. A concordance exists to solve exactly that problem, and it has quietly served Bible students for centuries before search engines existed.
At its core, a concordance is simply an alphabetical list of significant words in the Bible, along with every verse reference where each word appears. Look up ‘content,’ and you’ll find Philippians 4:11 listed among the results. It turns the whole Bible into a searchable index, long before computers made searching feel effortless.
How a Concordance Is Built
The most famous English concordance is Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, compiled by James Strong and first published in 1890. Strong assigned a unique number to every Hebrew and Greek word underlying the King James Version, then indexed every English word in the KJV back to those numbers. That means a Strong’s Concordance does two things at once: it lists every verse containing a given English word, and it lets you trace that English word back to its original-language root.
Other concordances exist for other translations—the NIV, ESV, and NASB each have their own—since word choices differ between translations and a concordance has to match the specific wording of the Bible version it indexes.
How to Actually Use One
Using a concordance is straightforward. Say you’re trying to find the verse about God’s ‘steadfast love enduring forever.’ You look up ‘steadfast’ (or ‘love,’ or ‘forever,’ depending on your translation), scan the list of references, and find Psalm 136, where that phrase repeats twenty-six times. From there you can read the whole psalm in context, which almost always teaches you more than the isolated phrase ever could.
A concordance is also valuable for word studies. Suppose you want to understand what the Bible means by ‘grace.’ Looking up every occurrence of the word lets you see how it’s used across different books and authors, giving you a fuller, more accurate picture than relying on a single verse or a modern assumption about what the word means.
Using the Original Language Numbers Wisely
One of the most powerful features of Strong’s Concordance is its Hebrew and Greek numbering system, which lets even readers with no training in the biblical languages peek behind an English word to its original term. This can be genuinely illuminating; discovering that the Greek word behind ‘love’ in John 21 shifts between agape and phileo, for example, adds real depth to that conversation between Jesus and Peter.
That said, this tool requires some caution. A Strong’s number gives you a word’s basic range of meaning, not a full definition, and a single Greek or Hebrew word can carry different shades of meaning depending on context. Building an entire doctrine on a Strong’s number lookup, without consulting a real lexicon or a sound commentary, can lead to shaky, overconfident conclusions. Use it as a starting point for curiosity, not a final authority.
A Tool for Bereans, Not a Replacement for Reading
The Bereans in Acts were commended because they searched the Scriptures daily to test what they were taught (Acts 17:11). A concordance serves that same spirit of eager, careful examination; it helps you cross-reference, verify, and dig deeper into what the Bible actually says rather than relying only on memory or secondhand summaries. Used well, it turns vague impressions of Scripture into grounded, verse-by-verse understanding.
But a concordance is a servant, not a substitute, for reading the Bible itself. Word searches can never replace sitting with a whole book, following an author’s argument from beginning to end, and letting the Holy Spirit apply the text to your heart (Psalm 119:11). Keep a concordance nearby, whether in print or built into a Bible app, and let it send you back into the text again and again rather than pulling you away from it.
Today, most people access a concordance’s function through Bible software or apps rather than a printed volume, typing a word into a search bar and instantly seeing every occurrence. That convenience is wonderful, but it can also tempt you to search shallowly, grabbing a single verse out of context to win an argument or settle a question quickly. Resist that temptation. Whether you’re holding a physical Strong’s Concordance or tapping a search icon on your phone, slow down enough to read each result in its own paragraph, not just its own line, and you’ll find this old, humble tool still doing exactly what it was designed to do: leading you deeper into the actual words of Scripture rather than away from them.