Lesson 9 | Searching the Original

How to Search a Word

As you likely have already guessed, searching for an original language word from a passage is done by simply clicking on the search icon found in the original language info box.
Original language searches are performed by using the Strong’s number (five-digit notation). However, you rarely are going to need to even pay attention to that number since you can generally just click over to your search.
The search results will be presented with your preferred Bible translation (the ESV by default) accompanying the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. Generally, each hit will show the English word that your search word has been translated to in red. However, this is dependent upon the status of the tagging data for that portion of Scripture, and so sometimes you will need to guess at what it should be.
In this case, you can deduce that this Hebrew word is translated “flutters” in Deuteronomy 32:11 based upon its Strong’s lexicon entry, even though that verse has not yet been tagged.

That’s [Mostly] All You Need to Know

Given the instruction that you have received on searching the Bible from Lessons 5-7 and what you have learned about the original languages and translations in Lesson 8, that is all you need to know to begin doing basic original language word searches. Almost. The issue comes into play when you are dealing with very common and very uncommon words.

Stats on How Many Times a Greek Word Appears in the NT
1-2 Hits
3-5 Hits
6-9 Hits
10-19 Hits
20-49 Hits
50+ Hits
3% of words (2,789 entries)
3% of words (1,012 entries)
2% of words (503 entries)
5% of words (497 entries)
7% of words (326 entries)
80% of words (308 entries)
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Stats on How Many Times a Hebrew/Aramaic Word Appears in the OT
1-2 Hits
3-5 Hits
6-9 Hits
10-19 Hits
20-49 Hits
50+ Hits
2% of words (4,388 entries)
2% of words (1,531 entries)
2% of words (841 entries)
4% of words (916 entries)
9% of words (809 entries)
81% of words (747 entries)
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We will discuss very common and very uncommon words, each in turn, in the next two steps.

Discovery!