Bible Strands
Glossary
The words you meet and nobody explains — and, at the end, the words this site uses about itself. Where a word is famous but is not in this translation, it says so and gives what it says instead.
Words in the Bible
Covenant
A binding agreement, closer to a marriage than a contract.
Not a deal that ends when one side breaks it. God makes covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel and David, each with promises and obligations attached, and the New Testament calls itself a new one.
Atonement
Putting right what wrongdoing broke, at a cost.
In the Old Testament it is what the sacrifices are for, and the Day of Atonement is its yearly centre. The New Testament applies the word to the death of Jesus.
Propitiation
An older word for a sacrifice that turns away anger.
You will hear it in sermons and older translations. The Berean text says atoning sacrifice instead. The argument behind the word choice is whether the sacrifice turns away wrath or cleanses the sin — both readings are old.
Not in the Berean text used here, which says atoning sacrifice.
Redemption
Buying something back — a slave, a field, a life.
A commercial word before it was a religious one. Israel's law let a relative buy back land or a person sold into debt, which is what Boaz does for Ruth, and the language carries over to what God does for a people.
Justified
Declared to be in the right.
A courtroom word rather than a moral one: the verdict, not the improvement. Paul and James use it to answer different questions, which is the oldest argument in the New Testament.
Sanctified
Set apart for a purpose.
Used of people, days and objects alike. A pot can be sanctified. It means reserved for one use, and only by extension does it mean made better.
Grace
Favour that was not earned and cannot be repaid.
The Greek word also means a gift, and the same root gives thanksgiving. Its opposite in Paul is not effort but wages.
Mercy
Not getting the worst of what was coming.
Often paired with grace: mercy withholds what was deserved, grace gives what was not. The Hebrew word behind much of it, chesed, is loyal love that keeps its commitments.
Repent
Turn around and go the other way.
The Greek is about a change of mind, the Hebrew about a change of direction. Neither word is primarily about feeling sorry.
Gospel
News, announced — not advice.
The word was ordinary Greek for the report of a victory or a royal birth. It means a thing that has happened, which is why the four books that tell it are narratives rather than manuals.
Sin
Missing what you were aimed at.
The main Hebrew and Greek words are both about falling short of a mark. Scripture treats it as damage done and as a power that holds people, not only as a rule broken.
Righteousness
Being in right relation — with God, and with people.
Closer to justice than to personal purity, and in the prophets the two are the same word. A righteous person is one whose dealings are straight.
Holy
Set apart, other, not ordinary.
Before it means morally pure it means distinct. Leviticus is largely about how the holy and the ordinary can share a camp without disaster.
Sabbath
The seventh day, kept free of work.
Grounded twice: in creation resting, and in a people who had been slaves and could not stop. It is the only one of the ten commandments that has to be argued for.
Sheol
The grave, or the place of the dead, in the Old Testament.
Not hell as later imagined. Everyone goes there, the good and the wicked, and the Old Testament says very little about it beyond that it is silent and nobody praises God from it.
Gehenna
A real valley outside Jerusalem, used as an image of judgment.
The Berean text translates it hell. It was the Valley of Hinnom, where children had been sacrificed under two kings of Judah — so when the word is used, the picture behind it is a specific place with a specific history.
Not in the Berean text used here, which says hell.
Firstborn
The eldest son, and the rank that came with him.
A double share of the inheritance and the leadership of the family. Scripture then repeatedly passes it to the younger — Isaac, Jacob, Ephraim, David — which is a pattern, not a series of accidents.
Remnant
The few left after a disaster.
A prophetic word: after judgment, a small number survive and the promise continues through them. It is how the prophets hold warning and hope together.
Gentile
Anyone not Jewish.
The Hebrew word simply means the nations. Whether Gentiles could belong without becoming Jewish first is the argument that runs through Acts and Galatians.
Messiah
The anointed one. Christ is the same word in Greek.
Kings and priests were anointed with oil to mark them out, so the word means the one marked for a task. It is a title, not a surname.
LORD in capitals
Where the Hebrew has God's own name.
Small capitals mark the four letters of the divine name, which Jewish practice does not pronounce; ordinary Lord translates a different word meaning master. The distinction is invisible when read aloud and worth knowing on the page.
Hosts
Armies. The LORD of Hosts means the commander of them.
Not a crowd of guests. The armies are heavenly ones, and the title is used most where Israel's own army is losing.
Glory
Weight, substance, the thing that makes something count.
The Hebrew root is about heaviness. God's glory is not brightness for its own sake but his presence carrying weight in a place, which is why it fills a tent and later a temple.
Flesh
Sometimes the body, sometimes human nature left to itself.
Context decides. In John the Word became flesh and that is good; in Paul living according to the flesh is the problem. Same word, two jobs.
Parable
A short story that makes one point sharply.
Not an allegory where every detail stands for something. Jesus uses them to get past an objection the hearer has not admitted to — which is how Nathan used one on David.
Kingdom of God
God's rule, wherever it is actually happening.
A reign more than a realm. The Gospels present it as already beginning and not yet complete, which is why Jesus can say it is near, it is among you, and it is coming.
Disciple
A learner who follows a teacher around.
The word is about apprenticeship rather than admiration. It is what the twelve are called long before anyone is called a Christian.
Apostle
One who is sent, with the sender's authority.
A wider group than the twelve: Paul, Barnabas and others are called apostles. The word carries commission, not rank.
Passover
The night Israel left Egypt, kept every year since.
A lamb, blood on the doorposts, and bread with no time to rise. The Gospels set the crucifixion in that week deliberately.
Manna
The food that appeared in the desert.
The name comes from the question the people asked when they saw it — what is it? Enough came for one day, and hoarding it spoiled it.
Selah
A word in the Psalms that nobody can translate.
Probably a musical or liturgical direction — a pause, or a lift. It is left untranslated because the honest answer is that we do not know.
Amen
So be it — I agree, and I will stand behind it.
From a Hebrew root meaning firm or reliable. Said at the end of a prayer to make it your own; Jesus uses it at the start of a sentence, which was unusual.
Hallelujah
Praise the LORD — it is two Hebrew words.
The Berean text translates it in the Psalms and keeps it untranslated in Revelation, which is why searching for it finds only the New Testament here.
Not in the Berean text used here, which says Hallelujah appears in Revelation; the Psalms say Praise the LORD.
Words this site uses
Strand
A study you build and keep: a canvas of tiles with a name.
From Ecclesiastes 4:12, a cord of three strands. A strand is yours; threads are what it is made of.
Thread
One connection between two verses.
Threads come in kinds, and the key on the canvas names them: link, leap, root, echo, meaning, place, named, kin, cited, and the ones you draw yourself.
Cross-reference
Where else this shows up — two verses long read together.
Ours are weighted by how many readers agreed the two belong together, so a link with 500 votes is a heavier claim than one with 5. They come from OpenBible's public dataset.
Votes
How many more readers thought two verses belong together than thought they did not.
The number beside a cross-reference, from OpenBible's public dataset, where readers vote a link up or down; what you see is the net of the two. Across the 344,799 links here it runs from -86 to 1,292 and averages 6.4, so anything in the hundreds is a link almost nobody disputes. It sorts the list rather than settling anything: famous verses collect far more votes than obscure ones, and a quiet link carrying three can still be the exact one you needed.
Leap
A cross-reference that travels a long way.
Across books or across the Testaments — Genesis to Revelation, a psalm to a cross. The threads easiest to miss, because the two ends sit so far apart.
Echo
Shared distinctive wording, where no concordance joined them.
Scored by rarity, so two uncommon words outweigh six ordinary ones. This is why a verse with no cross-references still leads somewhere.
Meaning thread
Two verses that say the same thing in different words.
Found by reading every verse for its sense and comparing all of them with all the others, so it catches what a concordance cannot — the same claim made with no shared vocabulary.
Root
The original Hebrew or Greek word behind an English one.
Elsewhere called a Strong's number, after the 1890 concordance that numbered them. Putting a root on the canvas brings in every verse that uses it, whatever the English does with it.
The Apocrypha
Books outside the Protestant canon, readable here and always labelled.
Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and the Maccabees are Scripture for Catholic and Orthodox readers. They are included so the question can be looked at rather than avoided, and never presented as part of the 66.