What are Strong's Numbers?
Frequently asked questions:
Strong's Numbers are an index of every word in the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. Each Strong's Number links the English meaning of biblical words back to the original meanings in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.
Strong's Numbers come from a reference book known as "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance
of the Bible." A concordance is an alphabetical list of words and definitions
just like a dictionary except they only apply to one book, which in our case the King James Bible.
Each word in the concordance links to an English definition in an exchange of concepts that helps you understand not just the definition but in many cases, the cultural context from which the word originated.
With a computer now in every home we can search the Bible with ease and with much more flexibility than a printed concordance. While it would seem that Strong’s Numbers are not as important to our personal study of the Bible as they use to be, there is more to Strong's Concordance than just a list of words in the Bible.
In any study of the Bible Strong’s Numbers help us to achieve the following:
- understand the author's intended meaning of a word
- easily find Bible words in their proper context
- compare different usages of the same word
- analyse keywords
- analyse word frequencies
- find and analyse phrases and idioms
The English language is complex and a single word can have several different meanings. Strong's Concordance shows us which of those meanings is correct. This is why the use of Strong’s Numbers is still important when referring to scholarly works and in any theological discussion. The Strong’s numbering system is also used in works by many other writers as a theological standard.