Frequently asked questions

An interlinear Bible shows the original-language text — Hebrew for the Old Testament, Greek for the New — alongside word-level information such as transliteration, Strong's numbers, and glosses, so readers who do not read Hebrew or Greek fluently can still study a verse word by word.

A lemma is the dictionary headword — the base form a word traces back to (runs, ran, and running all belong to the lemma run). That move is what this tool is built around: it takes a Hebrew or Greek word as it appears in a verse and links you to its lemma, its Strong's number, and its full lexicon entry — word-by-word study from the inflected form on the page back to the dictionary headword the app is named for. (A Strong's number is the stable ID assigned to a lemma.)

Type a book, chapter, and verse — for example Genesis 1:1, Psalm 23:1, or a short range like John 1:1-5 — into the search box and select Search. You can also jump straight to any book or chapter via the URL: /v/genesis, /v/john/3, or /v/genesis/1/1 for a single verse.

Not directly. You can search by reference (for example John 3:16) and by Strong's number or original-language word, but not by English keyword. The concordance on each word page matches the Hebrew or Greek form behind a verse, not the wording of an English translation.

The Hebrew Old Testament and its morphology are from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). The Greek New Testament is Tischendorf's 8th edition, with parsed morphology on every word. You can also read the Old Testament in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) instead of the Hebrew — use the Masoretic/Septuagint toggle in reading settings. See About for full sources and licenses.

The Masoretic Text (MT) is the traditional Hebrew Old Testament (we use the Westminster Leningrad Codex); the Septuagint (LXX) is its ancient Greek translation, made by Jewish scholars in the 3rd–1st centuries BC and frequently quoted in the New Testament. Lemma lets you read the Old Testament as either — switch with the Masoretic/Septuagint toggle in reading settings. The two sometimes differ in wording and versification, which is why a New Testament quotation occasionally matches the Greek rather than the Hebrew. (The LXX is shown in lemma — dictionary — form tagged to Strong's, not a fully parsed critical edition.)

When you read the Old Testament in the Greek Septuagint, some words are LXX-only vocabulary with no Strong's number. Each of those gets its own study page — the Greek lemma, a transliteration, a curated gloss, and a sample of where it occurs in the Septuagint — reached from the word links in the verse you are reading. (An LXX word that renders a Hebrew proper name links instead to that Hebrew word's lexicon entry.)

Yes — it's Tischendorf's 8th edition (1869–1872), a critical text built from the earliest manuscripts known in the 19th century, including Codex Sinaiticus (which Tischendorf discovered), rather than the later Byzantine/Textus Receptus tradition behind the King James Version. It is public domain. Each Greek word carries parsed morphology — tense, voice, mood, case — so you can study the grammar, not just the lexeme.

Translations occasionally number or divide verses differently, and the Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint can disagree on chapter and verse boundaries — most visibly in the Psalms, where the Greek numbering runs roughly one behind the Hebrew for much of the book. When a verse looks "off by one" between editions, this versification difference is usually why.

No. Lemma covers the 66-book Protestant canon (Genesis through Revelation). The deuterocanonical/apocryphal books are not included.

You can switch among 16 English translations in reading settings: modern and readable (Berean Standard Bible, World English Bible), classic (King James Version, Geneva 1599, Douay-Rheims), strictly literal for study (Young's Literal, Literal Standard Version, American Standard Version, Darby), and specialized (Tyndale New Testament, JPS Tanakh). A literal version stays close to the word order behind the interlinear; a modern one reads more naturally. Every version is public domain or openly licensed (CC BY-SA) — which is also why the NIV, ESV, and NASB aren't here: they're under restrictive copyright that can't be redistributed. Each verse shows its translation's license.

Often, yes. The Hebrew text and morphology and the cross-references are licensed CC BY 4.0 — you may copy, modify, and redistribute them with attribution. The Greek New Testament (Tischendorf), the BDB and Thayer lexicons, and most of the English translations are public domain; a few modern translations are CC BY-SA 4.0. Per-source license terms are listed on the About page.

Hebrew words use Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) and Greek words use Thayer's Greek Lexicon. Click any word in a verse to read its full entry, or open a word page directly — for example /w/H7225 (Hebrew) or /w/G3056 (Greek).

A Strong's number is a stable ID for each Hebrew (H####) or Greek (G####) dictionary word — for example H7225 (rēʾšîṯ, "beginning") or G3056 (logos, "word"). Click any word in a verse, or go straight to its word page, to open the lexicon entry. Each word page is also a full concordance: every verse where that exact word appears, grouped by book and filterable, so you can trace a term across the whole canon.

Each Hebrew word and each Greek New Testament word carries parsed morphology — its part of speech plus features such as stem or tense, voice, mood, person, gender, number, and case — decoded into plain English on the verse and word pages, so you can read the grammar without memorizing the codes. (The Septuagint is shown in dictionary/lemma form and is not parsed.)

The definitions come from two standard public-domain lexicons: Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906) for Hebrew and Thayer's (1889) for Greek. They are respected reference works, but they are over a century old — modern scholarship such as HALOT (Hebrew) and BDAG (Greek) sometimes refines or supersedes them — so treat each entry as a strong starting point, not the final word. The one-line gloss shown on each word is a curated sense chosen for clarity; the full lexicon entry is always one click away. All scripture and lexicon data lives in a fixed local store updated in batches, so it is stable and reproducible.

Every word page has a Cite this entry card: copy a ready-made plain-text citation, a permalink, or a BibTeX or RIS record for your reference manager. Open any word page — for example /w/H7225 — and expand Cite this entry.

Each verse page shows a Cross-references panel and a Commentary panel. The cross-references are topical verse-to-verse links from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, via the OpenBible.info dataset (CC BY 4.0). The commentary gathers fifty-nine sources. The classic Christian expositions are all public domain: the Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes; the full-Bible expositions of Matthew Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Adam Clarke, Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers, John Gill, Albert Barnes, Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary (1859, covering 65 of 66 Protestant books — Psalms excluded because the module uses Douay-Rheims chapter numbering which differs from the Protestant numbering, and the seven Deuterocanonical books excluded as outside the Protestant canon), Matthew Poole, Joseph Benson, John Wesley's Explanatory Notes, The Pulpit Commentary, the Scofield Reference Notes (1917 edition), Gaebelein's Annotated Bible (1913–1922), Kretzmann's Popular Commentary (1921–1924, Lutheran), and Keil & Delitzsch (Old Testament); Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (1864–1880, a comprehensive critical, doctrinal, and homiletical exposition of the full Bible, English edition edited by Philip Schaff); J. R. Dummelow's Commentary on the Holy Bible (1909, a concise one-volume exposition of the full Bible); Whedon's Commentary on the Bible (1874–1909, general editor Daniel D. Whedon, a full-Bible Methodist verse-by-verse exposition); The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1878–1918, general editor J. J. S. Perowne, the English whole-Bible companion series to the Cambridge Greek Testament mentioned below); John Trapp's Complete Commentary (a 17th-century Puritan exposition covering every book except Jude); The Sermon Bible, edited by William Robertson Nicoll (an 1888–1900 homiletical exposition covering every book except Obadiah); William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703, New Testament only); William Godbey's Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900, New Testament only, 25 of 27 books — Galatians and Titus absent from the source module, disclosed); McGarvey & Pendleton's Commentaries (1863–1916, a Restoration-Movement exposition covering only 11 New Testament books — the Fourfold Gospel harmony, Acts, and select epistles, disclosed as selective); F. W. Grant's Numerical Bible (4th ed. 1903, a Plymouth Brethren expository commentary covering 36 of 66 books — the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–2 Samuel, Psalms, and Ezekiel in the Old Testament, plus nearly all New Testament books except 2 John, 3 John, and Jude, disclosed as selective); J. N. Darby's Synopsis of the New Testament (c. 1857–1862, New Testament only, all 27 books — chapter-level running exposition); B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891, New Testament only, all 27 books); The Expositor's Bible (1887–1910, ed. William Robertson Nicoll, 49 volumes covering 65 of 66 books — 1 Corinthians is absent from the set, disclosed; section-level exposition keyed to opening verses); The Biblical Illustrator (c. 1880s–1900s, ed. Joseph S. Exell, a full-Bible homiletical/illustrative anthology for preachers and teachers); 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); Alexander MacLaren's Expositions of Holy Scripture (selective sermon expositions across most of the Bible); John Calvin's Commentaries (covering roughly two-thirds of the Bible); the New Testament studies of Bengel's Gnomon, Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Commentary, the Expositor's Greek Testament, the Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges, Henry Alford's The Greek Testament, the International Critical Commentary, Vincent's Word Studies, and F. L. Godet's Commentaries (on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians only, disclosed as selective); Charles Hodge's Commentary on Romans, Ephesians, and First Corinthians (selective New Testament, disclosed); J. B. Lightfoot's St Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon (1875, a Greek-text critical commentary, Colossians and Philemon only, disclosed as selective; his companion Galatians and Philippians volumes are not included, as the available public-domain scans carry garbled Greek); B. F. Westcott's commentaries on Hebrews (1889) and the Epistles of St John (1883, a Greek-text critical commentary, Hebrews and 1–3 John only, disclosed as selective; his Gospel of John volume is not included, as its scan lost the chapter headings needed for reliable verse-keying); J. A. Alexander's Commentary on Isaiah (Isaiah only) and his Commentary on Psalms (Psalms only); Charles Bridges' An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1846, Proverbs only); C. H. Mackintosh's Notes on the Pentateuch (c. 1857–1882, Genesis through Deuteronomy only); Patrick Fairbairn's commentaries on Ezekiel, Jonah, and the Pastoral Epistles (1849–1874, covering Ezekiel, Jonah, 1–2 Timothy, and Titus only, disclosed as selective); John A. Broadus' Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (1886, Matthew only); Martin Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535, in the Theodore Graebner English translation, 1939, Galatians only — public domain by U.S. copyright non-renewal); and Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (Psalms). Two modern study-note sets are openly licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (not public domain): the Tyndale Open Study Notes and unfoldingWord's translationNotes. On Old Testament verses the panel also draws the foundational Jewish commentators on the Tanakh — Rashi, Ramban (Nachmanides), Sforno, Radak and Ibn Ezra — in English translation via Sefaria (PD / CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA editions, each named on the panel). The classic Christian expositions are passage-level, so one note may cover several verses; the Geneva notes and the per-verse sources address a single verse. See About for the full source list and licenses.

Yes. The Strong's and lemma word pages and the verse word-by-word view each show a speaker button that reads the Hebrew or Greek word aloud using your browser's built-in speech synthesis. Because it draws on the voices installed on your device — synthesized text-to-speech, not a recorded native speaker — availability and quality vary by browser and platform, and the button appears only when your browser supports it. A written pronunciation guide and transliteration are shown alongside it either way.

You can install it: use your browser's "Install" or "Add to Home Screen" option and Lemma opens like a native app. Offline it is partial and we would rather say so plainly — the app itself is stored on your device and will open without a connection, but looking up a verse or a word needs the network, because the scripture and lexicon data lives on the server. That server-side store is why a lookup makes no third-party calls.

Your word and verse lookups run against a local data store — there are no third-party API calls for scripture or lexicon content. The only third-party requests on the site are the ads shown to free visitors: pages that carry ads carry two, one above the page content and one at the foot of the page. They are non-personalized, so nothing you read builds a profile of you. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Google's certified consent message is shown before any ad is served and your answer is honored; Google detects the region, and we never see the answer. Supporters on Patreon see no ads anywhere.

No — and that is deliberate. Lemma needs no account and stores nothing about you, so there is nothing to log in to and nothing tracked. It also means the tool does not save notes or highlights; keep those in your own notes alongside it.

Yes. Every page is free and needs no account — no study page is ever paywalled. Free visitors see up to two non-personalized ads on a page, one above the page content and one at the foot. Supporters on Patreon get an ad-free experience, plus downloadable extras like printable study sheets and bulk exports. Either way, all scripture and lexicon data is served from a local store. See Support for more.

Please tell us. If a gloss looks wrong, a verse is broken, or you spot a typo, email john@godlessengineering.com (also linked from Support). Corrections are welcome.

Godless Engineer. Contact: john@godlessengineering.com. See About for project background.