Word-by-word Hebrew & Greek with Strong's lexicon
Lemma is a word-by-word interlinear Bible for studying Scripture in its original languages. Enter a reference — a single verse like Genesis 1:1 or a short range like John 1:1-5 — and every word of the verse appears in the original Hebrew or Greek, each paired with its transliteration, Strong's number, and a concise English gloss. It is free to use and requires no account.
Click any word to open its full lexicon entry. Hebrew words link to Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) and Greek words to Thayer's Greek Lexicon, so you can move from a word in the text to its root, definition, and range of meaning without leaving the page. Hebrew and Greek New Testament words also carry full morphology and parsing — part of speech plus features such as stem or tense, voice, mood, person, gender, number, and case — decoded into plain English.
Around the original text, every verse page gathers a full layer of study tools: your choice of zero English translations, topical cross-references, commentary from classic Christian expositors and the foundational Jewish commentators on the Tanakh (Rashi and others), and — for the Old Testament — the option to read the Greek Septuagint alongside or instead of the Hebrew. It installs as an app, needs no account, and tracks nothing about your reading.
Read every verse word-by-word in the original Hebrew and Greek — with full lexicon, morphology, cross-references, and the Septuagint.
Every word, definition, and morphology tag Lemma shows comes from publicly licensed scholarship. The full source list and license terms are below so you can verify the provenance of anything you read on the site — and reuse the underlying data yourself under the same terms. All data is stored locally on the server, so word studies load fast and the core tool makes zero third-party calls at runtime.
Hebrew Old Testament text & morphology CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (the morphhb project), based on the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Provides the consonantal text, vowel points, cantillation, and per-word morphological parsing for every word of the Hebrew Bible.
Greek New Testament text Public domain
Tischendorf's 8th edition (Novum Testamentum Graece, 1869–1872) by Constantin von Tischendorf. Provides the Greek text used for every New Testament verse on the site.
Greek New Testament morphology Public domain
Tischendorf 8th ed. with morphology, edited by Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen (Scripture Systems) with G. Clint Yale and Maurice A. Robinson. Supplies the Robinson part-of-speech and parsing code (tense, voice, mood, case, number, gender, …) shown for every tagged Greek New Testament word — the same data behind the parsed-form profile and morphology badges. Where the morphology edition and our reading text diverge on the underlying word (a textual variant), Lemma leaves that word unparsed and marks it as a variant point rather than guessing a parse.
<rights>Public Domain. Copy freely.</rights>; CrossWire SWORD DistributionLicense=Public Domain. Bundled with the project as seed/greek-morph.json.gz.Greek New Testament textual variants CC BY 4.0
The “Where the printed editions differ” apparatus on New Testament verse pages comes from STEPBible’s TAGNT (Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament), based on work at Tyndale House Cambridge. It records, for each significant variant, which of the major printed Greek editions (Nestlé-Aland 28/27, SBL, Westcott-Hort, Tregelles, Tyndale House, the Textus Receptus, and the Byzantine/Majority text) contain the reading. It is a comparison of printed editions, not a manuscript-by-manuscript collation, and never asserts which reading is original.
seed/tagnt-variants.json.gz.Hebrew lexicon Public domain
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (1906), by Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. The standard scholarly Hebrew lexicon; provides the full BDB entry shown for every Hebrew Strong's number.
Greek lexicon Public domain
Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (1889), by Joseph Henry Thayer, building on the earlier work of Wilke and Grimm. Provides the full Thayer's entry shown for every Greek Strong's number.
Curated English glosses CC BY 4.0
The short English gloss displayed under each word (~14,000 entries covering every Strong's number in the corpus, plus ~7,400 more for Septuagint-only Greek words and names that fall outside Thayer's New Testament lexicon) was assembled for Lemma with AI assistance to give a single, concise modern-English sense for each lemma, chosen for clarity of display. It is a starting point, not a substitute for the full BDB or Thayer entry, which is always one click away. Released under the same CC BY 4.0 terms as the Hebrew source data.
seed/ai-glosses.json and seed/lxx-glosses.jsonEnglish translations Public domain
The English rendering shown beneath each verse can be read in any of zero public-domain translations: the World English Bible (default), Berean Standard Bible, Majority Standard Bible, King James Version, American Standard Version (1901), Revised Version (1885), Geneva Bible (1599), Douay-Rheims, Young's Literal Translation, Darby Bible, World Messianic Bible, Webster's Bible, Bible in Basic English, the Tyndale New Testament (1534, New Testament only), and the JPS Tanakh (1917, Old Testament only). Switch versions with the selector under the word grid.
seed/translations.json.gz.English translations — modern open license CC BY-SA 4.0 ShareAlike
Zero modern translations are offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license: the Literal Standard Version (2020), the Free Bible Version, the Unlocked Literal Bible, and the unfoldingWord Literal Text. All are free to read and redistribute with attribution under the same license.
English translation — text-critical (open license) CC BY 4.0
The Text-Critical English New Testament (Robert Adam Boyd, 2022) is a modern reasoned-eclectic translation of the Greek New Testament, offered under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (attribution only — no ShareAlike). New Testament only.
Cross-references CC BY 4.0
The Cross-references panel on each verse page (~341,000 verse-to-verse links, ranked by reader consensus) is the OpenBible.info topical cross-reference dataset, itself derived from the public-domain Treasury of Scripture Knowledge plus community voting.
seed/cross-references.json.gz.Commentary
The Commentary panel on each verse page gathers notes from 0 sources spanning (1) classic Christian expositions — the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible (1599) plus verse-by-verse expositions from Matthew Henry through Keil & Delitzsch and the e-Sword scholarly volumes (Bengel, Meyer, the Expositor’s Greek Testament, the Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges, Alford’s Greek Testament, the International Critical Commentary, Vincent, Godet’s Commentaries, Hodge’s Commentary on Romans, Ephesians & First Corinthians (Romans, Ephesians & 1 Corinthians only), Lightfoot’s Colossians and Philemon (Colossians & Philemon only), Westcott on Hebrews & the Epistles of John (Hebrews & 1–3 John only), Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers, Trapp’s Complete Commentary, Barnes, Haydock’s Catholic Bible Commentary (65 of 66 Protestant books — excludes Psalms and Deuterocanonicals, disclosed), Poole, Benson, John Calvin, John Wesley, The Pulpit Commentary, MacLaren’s Expositions of Holy Scripture, the Scofield Reference Notes, Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible, Kretzmann’s Popular Commentary, The Sermon Bible, Burkitt’s Expository Notes on the New Testament, Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament, McGarvey & Pendleton’s Commentaries, F. W. Grant’s Numerical Bible, J. A. Alexander on Isaiah (Isaiah only), J. A. Alexander on Psalms (Psalms only), Bridges on Proverbs (Proverbs only), Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy only), Fairbairn on Ezekiel, Jonah & the Pastoral Epistles (Ezekiel, Jonah, 1–2 Timothy & Titus only), Broadus on Matthew (Matthew only), Luther on Galatians (Galatians only — Martin Luther’s 1535 commentary in the Graebner 1939 English translation, public domain by U.S. copyright non-renewal), Darby’s Synopsis of the New Testament (New Testament only, all 27 books — J. N. Darby’s chapter-level running exposition, c. 1857–1862, public domain), Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (full Bible — ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff, 1864–1880, public domain), The People’s New Testament with Notes (New Testament only, all 27 books — B. W. Johnson’s verse-by-verse exposition, 1889–1891, public domain), The Expositor’s Bible (1887–1910, 49 volumes, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll — public domain), The Biblical Illustrator (c. 1880s–1900s, ed. Joseph S. Exell — a homiletical/illustrative anthology for preachers and teachers, public domain), The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary (c. 1892, gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell — a section-level sermon-outline anthology for preachers, 65 of 66 books, 2 John absent, disclosed; public domain), Dummelow’s Commentary on the Holy Bible (1909, ed. J. R. Dummelow — a concise one-volume exposition of the full Bible, public domain), Whedon’s Commentary on the Bible (1874–1909, gen. ed. Daniel D. Whedon — a full-Bible Methodist verse-by-verse exposition, public domain), The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1878–1918, gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne — the English whole-Bible companion series to the Cambridge Greek Testament below, public domain), and Spurgeon’s Treasury of David); (2) modern openly-licensed study notes — the Tyndale Open Study Notes and unfoldingWord translationNotes, both CC BY-SA 4.0; and (3) the foundational rabbinic Tanakh commentators on Old Testament verses — Rashi, Ramban, Sforno, Radak, and Ibn Ezra, via Sefaria. The classic expositions are passage-level — a note is grouped to the opening verse of the range it covers; the Geneva and per-verse sources cite the exact verse. The medieval Hebrew works are themselves public domain; the English translations are used under public-domain / CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA terms only — CC BY-NC editions are deliberately excluded. Each source’s license is shown verbatim below, and again beneath its notes on the panel.
seed/commentaries.json.gz (base) + seed/commentaries-gebible/ (the GEBible export ingest, Calvin & Wesley) + seed/commentaries-esword/ (a directory of per-source e-Sword overlay shards, one <CODE>.json.gz per source); built out-of-band by build-commentaries-seed.js, build-gebible-commentaries-seed.js, and build-esword-commentaries-seed.js.Translation renderings (KJV + ASV + BSB + ULT) Public domain — KJV, ASV, BSB CC BY-SA 4.0 — ULT
The “How translations render this word”
breakdown on each Strong’s lexicon page (/w/) shows
how an English version renders a given Strong’s number, with
counts. It is recovered from Strong’s-tagged /
word-aligned editions of the King James
Version, the American Standard Version (1901),
the Berean Standard Bible (all public domain), and the
unfoldingWord Literal Text (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Those tags / alignments are the source of the counts: an approximate
guide to each version’s translators’ choices, not a
word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Each version’s
license is labeled on the panel itself.
build-strongs-renderings-seed.js (ULT parsed by ult-usfm.js) and bundled as seed/strongs-renderings.json.gz.Bible dictionaries (Easton’s, Smith’s, Hitchcock’s) Public domain
The Bible dictionary panel on the Strong’s
lexicon pages (/w/) shows public-domain dictionary
articles for proper-noun entries:
Easton’s Bible Dictionary (M. G. Easton, 1897),
Smith’s Bible Dictionary (William Smith, 1863), and
Hitchcock’s Bible Names Dictionary (Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869).
All are public domain by age. Articles are matched to a Strong’s
number by name; because a biblical name can be shared
by several people or places, an article may treat more than one — the
panel says so, and asserts no one-to-one identification.
build-bible-dictionaries-seed.js and bundled as seed/bible-dictionaries.json.gz.Full Brown-Driver-Briggs sense tree Public domain — BDB / Sefaria CC BY 4.0 — OpenScriptures
The Senses facet on the Hebrew Strong’s
lexicon pages (/w/) draws its structured sense list from
the full, unabridged Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and
English lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906) — the
lexicon’s own marked-up sense hierarchy, with an example
scripture reference per sense where BDB cites one. (The inline lexicon
entry elsewhere on the page is the condensed BDB via Bolls; this is the
lexicon’s own full marked-up sense outline.) The BDB 1906 text is
public domain. The senses come from two digitizations of that same
lexicon: the primary one by Sefaria, supplemented for
entries Sefaria does not cover by the OpenScriptures
HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0).
build-bdb-senses-seed.js (Sefaria crawl merged with the OpenScriptures XML) and bundled as seed/bdb-senses.json.gz.Jastrow Dictionary Public domain
The Jastrow Dictionary facet on the Hebrew/Aramaic
Strong’s lexicon pages (/w/) is a second
Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon, shown alongside the Brown-Driver-Briggs entry.
It is A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and
Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow;
London, Luzac, 1903) — a public-domain reference covering Aramaic and
post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage beyond biblical
Hebrew. Jastrow entries carry no Strong’s number, so they are
matched to a Strong’s by its consonantal lemma; a lemma may carry
more than one Jastrow headword, and the cited example references are
limited to genuine biblical (Tanakh) verses.
build-jastrow-seed.js (from the cached Sefaria responses) and bundled as seed/jastrow.json.gz.Targum (Aramaic paraphrase) Public domain / CC0
The Targum panel on each Old Testament verse page shows the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text. Targum Onkelos (literal) and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) both cover the Torah, and Targum Jonathan the Prophets; the Writings have no standard Targum here, so the panel does not appear on those books. The Aramaic is shown for every covered verse; an English translation is shown only where a permissively-licensed one exists (it is genuinely partial, so many verses are Aramaic-only). It is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew. Some Targum Onkelos verses additionally show an unreviewed machine translation (generated by Claude Sonnet 5, an AI translate-then-audit pipeline), clearly labeled as such in-panel — it is not public domain and is pending human review.
build-targum-seed.js (which selects, per book and per language, the best permissively-licensed edition and re-verifies its license) and bundled as seed/targum.json.gz.Hebrew display font — Ezra SIL SIL OFL 1.1
Ezra SIL by SIL International. A Unicode Hebrew typeface modeled on the Leningrad Codex hand — the same manuscript tradition the Westminster text is based on — with full vowel-point and cantillation support. Used for every Hebrew word on the site.
Greek & English reading font — Gentium SIL OFL 1.1
Gentium by Victor Gaultney / SIL International. A polytonic Unicode typeface with full support for the accents, breathings, and iota subscripts used in the NT and LXX text — and a matching Latin design used for all long-form English reading text on the site (lexicon entries, article bodies, verse prose).
Interface font — Source Sans 3 SIL OFL 1.1
Source Sans 3 by Paul D. Hunt / Adobe. A neutral sans-serif used for interface chrome: navigation, headings, labels, buttons, and form controls. Shipped here as a variable font so weight is interpolated rather than swapped between discrete files.
Code & identifier font — Source Code Pro SIL OFL 1.1
Source Code Pro by Paul D. Hunt / Adobe. A monospaced companion to Source Sans 3, used for Strong's numbers (H1234 / G3056), URLs, pronunciations, and the compact morphology badges in the verse word grid.
Reusing this data. CC BY 4.0 lets you copy, modify, and redistribute the material — including commercially — provided you give appropriate credit and indicate any changes. The public-domain sources carry no use restrictions. If you build on Lemma's curated glosses or import pipeline, please attribute "Lemma — gebible.app" and link back to this page.
Everything listed above is somebody else’s work, published under a licence that lets us ship it — and that is the point, because it means you can check it and reuse it yourself. But Lemma is not a reprint of those sources. Between the public-domain scholarship and what you actually read on a verse page sits a layer of data and computation that is ours, and none of it exists in any of the corpora above.
Vqp3ms, V-PAI-3S. Lemma decodes both systems into plain prose with its own modules, and the Greek layer had to be rebuilt before it could be decoded at all: it was recovered by walking two public-domain editions of the same text together and writing a code only where their Strong’s numbers agreed, leaving the rest blank rather than guessing.
The most useful thing a study tool can tell you is where it stops. Lemma says so in the panels themselves, where the limit actually bites, and it belongs here too. Nothing below is a plan; these are statements about what the data underneath this site can and cannot support.
If you find something overstated here, that is a bug. The whole apparatus above is only worth anything if it is accurate, so a correction is the most useful thing you can send — get in touch.
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