The Work
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible was first published in 1890 by the Methodist Book Concern (Cincinnati and New York). It is a comprehensive index of every word in the King James Version of the Bible, listing every occurrence of every word with its context, keyed to a numbering system that identifies the original Hebrew or Greek word. The work contains approximately 1,700 pages and indexes over 300,000 word entries from the KJV text, linked to 8,674 Hebrew/Aramaic entries (Old Testament) and 5,624 Greek entries (New Testament).
The concordance was the product of over thirty years of labor by James Strong and a team of more than one hundred collaborators. It includes three main sections: the Main Concordance (an alphabetical listing of every significant English word in the KJV with every occurrence), the Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary (a concise lexicon of Old Testament words), and the Greek Dictionary of the New Testament. Each dictionary entry provides the word's transliteration, pronunciation, basic definition, and derivation.
The 'Strong's number' system - which assigns a unique number to each Hebrew and Greek root word - has become the universal cross-referencing standard for Bible study tools. The work has been continuously in print since 1890 and has been republished in numerous editions, including updated versions by Thomas Nelson (1990, keyed to the NKJV), Hendrickson (2007), and various digital editions.
Biblical Engagement
The concordance is unique among the works in this collection in that it does not engage with specific biblical passages thematically or theologically; rather, it indexes the entire biblical text mechanically. Its purpose, as Strong stated in his preface, was 'to put the reader in immediate command of every passage in which any word of the Bible occurs.'
However, the work's significance for biblical engagement is profound. By connecting every English word in the KJV to its Hebrew or Greek original, Strong made the original languages accessible to readers without formal linguistic training. A reader encountering 'love' in John 3:16 can look up the Strong's number (G25, agapao) and discover that the same Greek word appears in 1 John 4:8 ('God is love'), Matthew 5:44 ('Love your enemies'), and Romans 8:28 ('all things work together for good to them that love God'). This capacity for word-level cross-referencing across the entire biblical canon transformed lay Bible study.
The concordance reflects the KJV's translation choices and their relationship to the original languages. By making visible the many-to-one and one-to-many relationships between Hebrew/Greek words and their English translations - for example, showing that the single Hebrew word chesed (H2617) is translated in the KJV as 'mercy,' 'kindness,' 'lovingkindness,' 'goodness,' and 'favour' - Strong's inadvertently revealed the interpretive decisions embedded in any translation. This transparency, paradoxically, helped readers understand both the richness of the original languages and the limitations of translation.
The numbering system has proved particularly important for several theologically significant word studies. The distinction between agape (G26, self-giving love) and phileo (G5368, brotherly affection) in the New Testament, the range of meanings of chesed (H2617) in the Old Testament, the theological weight of dikaiosyne (G1343, righteousness/justification) in Paul's epistles, and the centrality of shalom (H7965, peace/wholeness/completeness) in the Hebrew Bible are all made accessible through Strong's numbers.
Author & Context
James Strong (1822-1894) was born in New York City and educated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he later served as a professor. He was a Methodist layman - not an ordained minister - with prodigious intellectual gifts. He held the chair of Exegetical Theology at Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey, from 1868 until his death. He was also the principal editor (with John McClintock) of the Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (12 vols., 1867-1887), one of the most ambitious reference projects of the nineteenth century.
Strong began work on the concordance around 1860. The project required assembling a team of collaborators (Strong acknowledges over one hundred contributors in his preface) and developing a systematic method for indexing every word in the KJV text, identifying its original-language source, and creating the numbering system. The work took approximately thirty years to complete - a feat of scholarly endurance comparable to James Murray's editorship of the Oxford English Dictionary during the same period.
The concordance appeared at a specific moment in the history of American Protestantism. The late nineteenth century saw the rise of the Bible conference movement, the emergence of dispensationalist theology (through the Scofield Reference Bible, 1909), and a growing emphasis on lay Bible study in evangelical churches. Strong's concordance met the needs of this movement perfectly: it enabled ordinary believers to conduct detailed word studies without seminary training, supporting the Protestant conviction that Scripture is accessible to all believers (the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture).
The concordance was not the first English-language Bible concordance - Alexander Cruden's Complete Concordance (1737) had served readers for over a century - but it was the first to incorporate the original-language numbering system. This innovation, born of Strong's dual expertise in English literature and biblical languages, was the decisive advance that ensured the work's lasting significance.
Structure and Method
The Main Concordance occupies the bulk of the work. Each entry lists an English word from the KJV, followed by every verse in which the word appears, with a brief context snippet (typically 10-15 words showing the word in its immediate phrase). Each occurrence is marked with a number referring to the Hebrew or Greek dictionary at the back of the volume.
The Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary provides brief definitions, transliterations, and etymological notes for 8,674 Old Testament words. The Greek Dictionary of the New Testament does the same for 5,624 New Testament words. These dictionaries are necessarily compressed - they are not full lexicons like Brown-Driver-Briggs (Hebrew) or Thayer/BDAG (Greek) - but they provide sufficient information for basic word study.
Strong's numbering system works as follows: Hebrew/Aramaic words are numbered H1 through H8674; Greek words are numbered G1 through G5624. Some numbers are unused (representing variant forms or later corrections), and the system has been supplemented in modern editions with additional numbers for words that Strong's original system did not fully cover.
Significance for Bible Study
The concordance democratized biblical scholarship in a way that few other reference works have matched. Before Strong's, meaningful engagement with the original languages required years of seminary training in Hebrew and Greek. After Strong's, any literate person with a KJV and a concordance could trace word usage across the entire Bible, compare how the same Hebrew or Greek word was translated in different passages, and gain basic insight into the semantic range of key theological terms.
This democratization had theological implications. The Protestant principle of sola Scriptura - that Scripture alone is the supreme authority in matters of faith - depends on Scripture being accessible to believers. Strong's concordance made the original-language text accessible in a way that no previous tool had achieved, strengthening the practical foundation of Protestant biblical authority.
The concordance also facilitated the topical and proof-text approach to Bible study that characterized much of evangelical hermeneutics in the twentieth century. By making it easy to find every occurrence of a given word, Strong's encouraged readers to build theological arguments from cross-referenced word usage - a method that has both strengths (comprehensive textual coverage) and limitations (the risk of ignoring context, genre, and authorial intent).
Critical Assessment
Scholars have identified several limitations of Strong's system. The numbering is based on the KJV text, which means that words not present in the KJV (or present in different forms) are not indexed. The brief dictionary definitions sometimes flatten the semantic complexity of Hebrew and Greek words. The one-number-per-root-word approach can obscure important distinctions between different forms and usages of the same root.
More fundamentally, the word-study method that Strong's enables has been critiqued by linguists, most notably by James Barr in The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961), who argued that meaning resides in sentences and contexts, not in individual words or their etymologies. The 'root fallacy' - the assumption that a word's meaning is determined by its etymological root - is a persistent danger in Strong's-based word study.
Despite these limitations, the concordance's utility is undeniable. Scholars use it as a quick-reference tool; pastors use it for sermon preparation; lay readers use it for personal study. Its numbering system has become so ubiquitous that it is the default cross-referencing standard for virtually every Bible software platform, from BibleHub and Blue Letter Bible to Logos, Accordance, and Olive Tree.
Legacy
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance is the most widely used Bible reference tool in the history of English-speaking Protestantism. Its numbering system has outlived the KJV itself as a cross-referencing standard: modern concordances keyed to the NIV, ESV, NASB, and other translations still use Strong's numbers. The digital revolution has multiplied its reach: Strong's numbers are integrated into virtually every Bible software application and website, enabling instant original-language lookup for millions of users.
The concordance also influenced the development of subsequent reference tools. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (1940) is organized by Strong's numbers. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (1980) cross-references Strong's numbers. The entire infrastructure of popular-level original-language Bible study rests on the foundation that Strong built.
In a broader cultural sense, the concordance represents the nineteenth-century Protestant conviction that scholarship should serve the church - that the tools of academic biblical study should be made available to ordinary believers. This conviction, shared by Strong with contemporaries like Brooke Foss Westcott, Fenton John Anthony Hort, and the translators of the Revised Version (1881), produced a golden age of accessible biblical scholarship whose fruits are still being harvested.
Reading Alongside Scripture
The concordance is designed to be used alongside the entire Bible. For readers interested in experiencing its utility, Psalm 119:105 ('Thy word is a lamp unto my feet') can be explored through H1697 (dabar, word/thing/matter) and H5216 (ner, lamp). John 3:16 can be explored through G25 (agapao, to love), G2889 (kosmos, world), and G4100 (pisteuo, to believe). 2 Timothy 3:16 ('All scripture is given by inspiration of God') can be explored through G2315 (theopneustos, God-breathed).
Further Reading
- James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961) - the classic critique of word-study methodology, essential for understanding the limitations of concordance-based approaches. - Moises Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics (1983; 2nd ed. 1994) - a balanced introduction that acknowledges both the value and the dangers of word study. - Robert L. Thomas, ed., New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1981) - the major successor to Strong's, keyed to the NASB but retaining Strong's numbering system.