Why You Need an Exhaustive Concordance

An exhaustive concordance is an essential reference for thoroughly researching the individual words of the Bible. Since God inspired the very words of Scripture, it follows that as Christians we should take each word seriously as we strive to understand what God has said. An exhaustive concordance is a great help in that righteous endeavor. In this post, we want to introduce you to the ESV Exhaustive Concordance, explain how you can use this resource, and show you how it works in the Olive Tree App.

The ESV Exhaustive Concordance

A concordance is a reference work that is basically a list words from any given book. Normally, the entries on this list are arranged alphabetically and include a bit of the surrounding context. An exhaustive concordance lists every word in a given book, even if the word is only used once. Thus, the ESV Exhaustive Concordance list all the words in the ESV translation. This amounts to over 340,000 total entries consisting of nearly 14,000 different words.

The ESV Exhaustive Concordance takes concordances to a whole other level by including the underlying Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words. This allows the reader to see which word in the original language is represented by the corresponding English word in the ESV translation. Here’s an example from the concordance under the entry for “test”:

The screenshot provides a list of every occurrence of test in the ESV in canonical order. At the end of each entry, a link is provided to the specific Greek word underlying the English word, test. You can see from this one example that there are about eight different Greek words translating the one English word test in the ESV! The Greek word translated test in 1 Corinthians 3:13 has the designation TEST_G1.

Let’s take this one step further. Tapping on TEST_G1 will open another link to the glossary for the original languages, in this case, Greek. You can see from these entries which Greek word is identified by the English word test (δοκιμάζω), how many times that word appears in the original Greek text (22), what the word means (test, evaluate, approve), and how it’s translated in the ESV (test, approve, interpret, examine, discern, etc.).

How the ESV Concordance Can Help Your Studies

The screenshots above provide some examples of the type of information the ESV Exhaustive Concordance makes available. So, how can you use this information to your benefit?

The ESV Exhaustive Concordance can help you locate Scripture references quickly, even if you can only recall one or two words from the passage. The Search feature in the Olive Tree App will enable you to do this with any translation, but the ESV Exhaustive Concordance will not only provide a list of references but will also lead to the underlying words in the original languages.

You can use the ESV Exhaustive Concordance to conduct word studies on the English words in the translation and the underlying Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek words. Easily access the original language information in the glossary, find the number of occurrences of that word, see how it’s translated in the ESV, and look up each occurrence to see how the word is used in context.

The examples in the above screenshots for the word test demonstrate how words and concepts are related. Four Greek words are behind the English word test in the ESV: δοκιμάζω, δοκιμή, ἐκπειράζω, and πειράζω. The first two words are obviously related with one being a verb and the other a noun. The third and fourth word are obviously related as well. The third word is a compound form of the fourth word, the verb πειράζω. With this information, you can begin to see the overlap in meaning and usage giving you a better understanding of the concept in the Scriptures.

How We’ve Made This Even Better

While you can search through the concordance or the glossaries to locate Scripture references or conduct your own word studies, we’ve enhanced the ESV Exhaustive Concordance for use in the Resource Guide of the Study Center. This gives you quick access to articles in the concordance related to the passage you have open in the main window. Just open the Study Center and scroll down to Topics in the Resource Guide to find articles in the concordance! This is just one more way the Olive Tree App is an all-in-one platform for serious Bible study.

Get the ESV Exhaustive Concordance

Hopefully, you’ve seen the value a resource like the ESV Exhaustive Concordance can bring to your own studies of the Scriptures. If you’re not fully convinced yet, then check out the video below or go directly to our store through the link and get this awesome resource for your Olive Tree Library!