WORD STUDIES IN THE BIBLE: PART 3 (EPHESIANS 1:14)

It is time to revisit the use of analytical concordances. In Part 1 of this series, I explained how they might be used to identify the location of a given passage. But there is much more useful information contained in them. Let me begin with Young's Analytical Concordance since I am most familiar with it.

The first thing you need is a King James Version of the passage in question. You may possibly get by with a related translation such as RSV or NKJV, but certainly don't count on finding your individual words in a concordance if you are looking at a paraphrase instead.

WARNING – The discussion below is probably rather confusing unless you happen to have one of the two concordances in front of you as you are reading. So if you are planning to use a free on-line concordance instead, just skim through what follows and then wait for a further discussion at the end of “Word Studies: Part 4” instead.

Young's Analytical Concordance

As an example, there is the word “inheritance” in Ephesians 1:14. Both Strong's and Young's begin in the same manner with an alphabetical listing by English words used in KJV. So under “I” in Young's we find a listing for “inheritance.” It is accompanied by the appropriate Greek word or words translated this way. In this case we see that there are 14 passages using kleronomia as well as a brief definition (“what is obtained by lot, possession”). And it turns out that there is one more Greek word (kleros) translated the same way. So it is listed separately with its own nuanced meaning (“a lot, possession”). In some cases, these two definitions will be detailed enough that you can figure out why the author used the one rather than the other word. In lieu of that, you may have to read the various passages given for each of those two words to see if you can discern any subtle difference in meaning. Each passage given will contain enough phrases from those passages to help identify whether they might be of any interest.

Another valuable feature is found at the end of Young's. It gives an alphabetical listing of all the Greek words followed by the various ways that word has been translated into English. So if we look up another key word which is in Ephesians 1:14, apolutrosis, we find that it is translated nine times as “redemption” and once as “deliverance.” If all we had to go on was the KJV translation in Ephesians 1:14, we would have entirely missed Hebrews 11:25 in which the same Greek word appeared.

And if we wished to go even deeper into the NT meaning of the noun apolutrosis, that reverse listing at the end of Young's also contained the associated verb apoluo (“redeem”). It is translated into a diverse number of English words such as dismiss, divorce, forgive, let depart, let go, loose, put away, release, send away, and set at liberty. Turn those into nouns and you will get a whole lexicon of meanings for apolutrosis itself.

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance

If one happens to have access to Strong's instead, the process is slightly different. A search starts out in exactly the same way, by looking up the English word alphabetically. In this case, let's look for another key word in Ephesians 1:14 as it appears in KJV – “earnest.” As in Young's, a portion of each passage containing that word will appear along with its Bible reference.

The differences at this point from Young's are three-fold:

1. Greek words with their definitions are not given at all; instead a “Strong's number” is assigned to each separate passage. In this case, we see that there are apparently five different Greek words translated as “earnest,” with respective numbers of 603, 728, 1972, 4056 and 4710. We see that, as in Young's, the Greek word appearing in Ephesians 1:14 is the same as that appearing also in II Corinthians 1:22 and 5:5. But we have to deduce that from the fact that they have the same numbers. We still don't know at this point what any of the Greek words are that appear as “earnest” or what their respective definitions are. All those things are found together in Young's, but for Strong's we now need to turn to the back of the book for a NT dictionary arranged by numerical listings of all the Strong's numbers assigned to Greek words.

After a somewhat laborious process spent looking up each of these numbers in turn, we find:

    603 = apokaradokis meaning “intense anticipation, earnest expectation.”

    728 = arrhabon meaning “a pledge, i.e., part of the purchase-money or property given in advance as security for the rest:-earnest.”

    1972 = epipothesis, “a longing for:-earnest (vehement) desire.

    4056 = perissoteros, “more superabundantly:-more abundant, more frequent much more, the rather.”

    4710 = spoude, “despatch, eagerness:-business, care, diligence, forwardness, haste.”

At this point you may begin to feel as I did that Strong's has taken us on a wild goose chase. We have wasted time turning back and forth in the book only to waste our time on Greek words that have an entirely different meaning from the one in Ephesians 1:14, and one isn't even a noun but an adjective or adverb instead.

2. In addition, it turns out that unlike Young's, Strong's has no reverse index listing the various English words used to translate arrhabon. This is a huge drawback. For example, if we were looking for all the appearances of another word in Ephesians 1:14, doxa, both Young's and Strong's would identify the same 144 passages in which it is translated as “glory.” However, Strong's would miss the the 13 other passages in which the KJV happened to render it as dignity, honor, praise or worship instead.

3. But to compensate for its deficiencies are the following: somewhat longer definitions of the Greek words, a numbering system which correlates with some Greek-English interlinear Bibles, and a long appendix giving a list of all the places in the NT where 47 common words are located. These are simple words such as is, I, it, the, etc. However, I can't for the life of me figure out the possible use of this last feature since no one is likely to search for “the” in the Bible looking for one particular passage, especially since there are not even any simple phrases given with each listing to give us a hint, just the book, chapter, and verse.