Pitfalls of Using Strong’s Numbers

Since 1890 when James Strong published his Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, people everywhere have used this work for their personal Bible study. By using the concordance, they could look up a verse by any word they remembered in that verse and find its location in the Bible. Before the age of computers, a concordance like the one compiled by Strong was the way to find a verse in the Bible if one had forgotten in which book and chapter the desired verse was to be found.

But that was not all for which Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance was useful. If a person was reading their Bible and wanted to find other verses that contained the same English word as a particular word that had caught their attention, they could look that word up in the concordance (since every English word in the Authorized Version of the Bible was alphabetically listed) and find other verses that utilized that same word. This procedure became a handy tool for finding cross-references to the verse or passage one might be reading or studying.

And there was yet a further component to James Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. Every Hebrew word (in the Old Testament) and Greek word (in the New Testament) was assigned a number. By looking up the English word, one could find the corresponding Hebrew or Greek number underlying the English word, and by this method could determine whether the same Hebrew and/or Greek word was the original from which the English word had been translated. Since many different English words were used to translated a given Hebrew or Greek word (depending upon the context), this gave the English reader the advantage of knowing if more than one Hebrew or Greek word was represented by a single English word. As an example, consider Genesis 39:6 as compared to Genesis 42:7.

And he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand; and he knew not ought he had, save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was a goodly person, and well favoured. (Gen 39:6, KJV)

And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food. (Gen 42:7, KJV)

In both verses the English word “knew” is found. One might wonder: “Do each of these occurrences translate the same Hebrew word?” Opening up Strong’s Concordance to the word “knew,” and finding each of the verses, one discovers that the number assigned to the word “knew” is different in these two verses. In Gen 39:6 “knew” has the number 3045 while in Gen 42:7 “knew” has the number 5234. Going to the back of the Concordance where the Hebrew and Greek numbering system is laid out in numerical order, one finds that #3045 designates ידַָע (yāda‘) while #5234 designates the Hebrew word נכַָר (nākar). By this method, the reader is alerted to the fact that different Hebrew words lay behind the same English word used by the KJV translators.

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