We know many of you visiting our site have a favorite translation of the Bible—one that you are familiar with, have memorized, and internalized in your heart. We love that, and we want you to feel free to experience our stories using the translation of your choice.
To maintain a consistent voice throughout our resources, we would love to introduce you to a relatively new English translation: the Berean Standard Bible (BSB). Its name comes from Acts 17:11: "Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true."
Every Scripture passage featured in Significant Stories is from the BSB translation. We appreciate its clear, straightforward text that is equally helpful for public reading, deep study, and sharing with others.
For centuries, monks painstakingly crafted illuminated manuscripts — surrounding each page of scripture with gold leaf, cross-references, and scholarly glosses, transforming the text into something both beautiful and deeply understood. The word illuminated meant both made beautiful and made clear.
Illuminated Word Study carries that same intention into the digital age. We have carefully aligned centuries of scholarly work — lexicons, concordances, dictionaries, cross-references, and semantic analyses — so that every resource is always turned to the right page, presenting their intersection right inside each verse. Click any verse, and the text opens to reveal its deepest layers.
What's Inside
Illuminated Word Study brings together three study dimensions, all accessible from a single click on any verse:
Interlinear — Word-by-word alignment of the English translation with the original Greek and Hebrew, with multiple translation sources and manuscript tradition notes.
Word Study — Click any word to explore a vertical chain of progressive study stations: identity and pronunciation, scholarly definitions, grammatical parsing, an interactive distribution sparkline showing every occurrence across the Bible, etymological roots, and Septuagint bridge connections. The study header stays pinned below the scripture controls as you scroll.
Verse Study — Compare how the verse reads across four centuries of English translation, explore cross-references with a visual arc diagram spanning Genesis to Revelation, read dictionary articles about the people, places, and concepts mentioned, and see geographic locations on a parchment-styled map.
How to Use
Click any verse to open its Illuminated Word Study view.
Word order — Text boxes default to English word order. Click Greek (NT) or Hebrew (OT) to switch to the original language order.
Hover a word — Highlights the corresponding word in both columns.
Click a word — Opens detailed word study and keeps matching words highlighted in both columns.
Translation Sources
Each column has its own selector to switch between translation sources independently.
English column — Choose between BSB (Berean Standard Bible) and KJV (King James Version). BSB provides curated word-level alignment; KJV words are linked via Strong's numbers.
Original language column — Choose between BSB interlinear data and the independent source texts: Nestle 1904 (Greek NT) or OSHB (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, OT).
BSB + BSB — The only combination with a word-order sort toggle, since BSB has curated English-to-original word pairings.
Red letter — Words of Jesus appear in red in both BSB and KJV.
Word Study
Click any word to open its study panel — a vertical chain of six progressive stations that build from identity to context:
Identity — The word as it appears in the manuscript (inflected form), with transliteration, root form (shown with an arrow when different from the inflected form), Strong's number pill, and pronunciation guide.
Meaning — Brief definition (Dodson for Greek, Strong's for Hebrew), with expandable full scholarly entries from Abbott-Smith (Greek) or Brown-Driver-Briggs (Hebrew). Greek words also show Louw-Nida semantic domain categories.
Form — Parsing code with human-readable expansion, decoded morphology for Hebrew verb stems (OT) and Greek grammatical forms (NT), and manuscript variant indicators when editions disagree about a word's inclusion.
Across Scripture — An interactive sparkline showing every occurrence of the word across all 66 books of the Bible. Click any book bar to expand chapter-level detail, then click a chapter to see individual verse references with context from the BSB text. Verse references open the preview modal.
Roots — The etymological origin of the word, shown as inline mini study cards with their own identity, definition, and interactive sparkline. Root derivations work across testaments — a Greek word can trace back to a Hebrew origin.
Septuagint Bridge — For Hebrew words, shows the Greek translation chosen by the Septuagint translators, rendered as a mini study card with the Greek word's identity, definition, and NT distribution sparkline. This bridge connects the testaments — the same Greek word used in the Septuagint often reappears in the New Testament.
Additional notes:
Multiple Strong's — Some KJV words map to multiple original-language words. Each appears as an expandable section (first auto-expanded) with its own full study chain.
Manuscripts — 934 New Testament words are annotated with manuscript tradition data, indicating which critical editions include or omit the word.
Manuscript Traditions
The New Testament was hand-copied for centuries before the printing press. Scholars compare thousands of surviving manuscripts to reconstruct the original text. Different editorial teams weigh the manuscript evidence differently, producing distinct critical editions. When a word shows a manuscript marker, it means these editions disagree about whether that word belongs in the text.
TR — Textus Receptus. The "received text" compiled in the 16th century, based on late Byzantine manuscripts. The basis for the King James Bible and other Reformation-era translations.
BYZ — Byzantine Majority Text. Represents the reading found in the majority of surviving Greek manuscripts, which are predominantly from the Byzantine tradition.
RP — Robinson-Pierpont. A modern Byzantine majority text that follows the consensus reading of the Byzantine manuscript family.
WH — Westcott-Hort. A pioneering 19th-century critical text that prioritized the earliest Alexandrian manuscripts, shifting scholarship away from the Textus Receptus.
NE — Nestle. An early critical text that became the foundation for the Nestle-Aland editions. Based on comparing multiple 19th-century critical texts.
NA — Nestle-Aland. The standard modern critical text (currently in its 28th edition). Used by most Bible translators and scholars worldwide. Published by the German Bible Society.
SBL — SBL Greek New Testament. A critical text published by the Society of Biblical Literature, offering an alternative to the NA text with a transparent editorial methodology.
ECM — Editio Critica Maior. The most comprehensive critical apparatus available, cataloging variants from virtually all known manuscripts. An ongoing project by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research.
Definitions
Each word's definition draws from multiple scholarly lexicons, layered from brief to detailed.
Brief definition — A concise gloss of the word's meaning. Greek words use the Dodson lexicon; Hebrew words use Strong's definitions.
Full Definition — Expand to see a comprehensive scholarly entry. Greek words draw from Abbott-Smith's Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), with grammatical analysis, sense distinctions, and scripture references. Hebrew words draw from Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906), the standard reference Hebrew lexicon, with etymological and contextual detail.
Pronunciation — A phonetic guide to how the original word sounds.
Semantic Domains
Additional linguistic context appears below the definition depending on whether the word is Greek or Hebrew.
Greek words — Louw-Nida domains — Shows which conceptual category the word belongs to in the Louw-Nida Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. Unlike traditional alphabetical lexicons, Louw-Nida organizes words by meaning — so words for "speak," "write," and "proclaim" all appear together under "Communication." This helps you find related words and understand a word's place in the broader semantic landscape. There are 93 top-level domains covering all NT vocabulary.
Hebrew words — LXX equivalents — Shows how the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, abbreviated LXX) rendered this Hebrew word. For example, the Hebrew אֱלֹהִים (Elohim, "God") was translated as θεός (theos) in the LXX. Click the Greek Strong's number to see its full occurrence data. The LXX translation choices are significant because New Testament authors, writing in Greek, often drew their Old Testament quotations from the Septuagint rather than translating directly from Hebrew.
Lexicon Sources
The definition and enrichment data draws from these scholarly sources:
Dodson — The Dodson Greek Lexicon. Brief, accessible definitions for 5,400+ Greek Strong's numbers. Provides the concise gloss shown for every Greek word.
Strong's — Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. James Strong's numbering system (1890) assigns a unique number to every Hebrew and Greek root word in the Bible. The Hebrew definitions from Strong's provide brief glosses for 8,600+ words.
Abbott-Smith — A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (G. Abbott-Smith, 1922). A scholarly one-volume lexicon with detailed sense analysis, grammatical notes, and extensive cross-references to classical and Septuagint usage. Covers 5,300+ Greek entries.
BDB — A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brown, Driver, Briggs, 1906). The standard reference lexicon for Biblical Hebrew for over a century. Entries include etymology, cognate languages, and detailed analysis of how each word is used across the Old Testament. Matched to 5,600+ Strong's numbers.
Louw-Nida — Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains (Louw & Nida, 1988). Rather than alphabetical, this lexicon groups 5,300+ Greek words by meaning into 93 conceptual domains. Semantic domain data is sourced from the MACULA Greek linguistic annotations of the Nestle 1904 text.
LXX — Septuagint Greek equivalents. For 4,100+ Hebrew words, shows which Greek word the Septuagint translators chose, with occurrence counts. Sourced from the MACULA Hebrew linguistic annotations, which align the Masoretic Hebrew text with the Septuagint Greek.
Verse Study
Below the interlinear columns, tabs provide additional study resources for the selected verse.
Compare Translations
Click "Compare Translations" below the interlinear columns to see how the verse reads across four centuries of English translation.
Phrase alignment — A five-column grid aligning corresponding phrases from KJV (1611), ERV (1885), ASV (1901), WEB (2000), and BSB (2020) row by row, with yellow highlighting for phrases that differ from KJV.
Word-level differences — Expand the collapsible section to see each translation with word-level difference highlighting. Green highlights words that differ from KJV. Blue highlights words new to a later translation that weren't in its predecessor.
Word sync — Clicking a word in the interlinear columns outlines the same word across the compare panel, so you can trace it through all five translations.
Cross References
Click "Cross References" to see other passages related to this verse, shown in two views:
Arc diagram — A Bible-span visualization showing the verse's position across all 66 books. Arcs above the axis represent outgoing references (this verse points to), arcs below represent incoming references (other verses that point here). Arc color indicates which testament the other end is in — blue for Old Testament, red for New Testament. Section labels (Law, History, Poetry, etc.) mark groups along the axis. Hover any arc to see the reference; click to preview the passage.
Word-aware filtering — When you select a word in the interlinear, the arc diagram and reference lists automatically highlight cross-referenced passages where that same original-language word (Strong's number) appears. Bright arcs lead to chapters containing the word you're studying; dimmed arcs lead elsewhere. This reveals which cross-references share vocabulary with your selected word — connecting lexical study to cross-reference exploration. The filter clears when you deselect the word.
Most Referenced — The top 5 cross-references ranked by community votes (outgoing and incoming merged), representing the strongest connections recognized by scholars and readers.
Related Passages — Additional voted references beyond the top 5, collapsed by default.
Extended References — Unvoted references from the source data, for exhaustive study. Each tier shows direction labels ("Outgoing" / "Incoming") when both exist.
Click any reference — Opens a verse preview showing the passage text, with an option to navigate to the full chapter.
Dictionary
Click "Dictionary" to see encyclopedia entries for people, places, and concepts mentioned in the verse.
First-sentence previews — Each entry shows a brief preview of its opening sentence, so you can quickly scan what a term refers to before expanding.
Collapsible entries — Click a term to expand its full article. Entries range from brief definitions to multi-paragraph treatments with historical context.
Scripture links — References within dictionary articles are clickable, opening a verse preview of the cited passage.
Map
When a verse mentions identifiable places, click "Map" to see them on a parchment-styled map with terrain shading.
Place markers — Gold dots for settlements, blue for water features, triangles for mountains. Click a marker to highlight the corresponding place card.
Place cards — Each card shows the ancient name, modern identification, place type, and how many times the location appears across scripture. Click a card to fly to that marker on the map.
Data source — Geographic data from OpenBible Geocoding (CC-BY 4.0), covering 1,300+ ancient places with coordinates based on modern archaeological identifications.
Timeless Reflections
Below the study tabs, a collapsible "Timeless Reflections" section provides commentary from two public domain works spanning three centuries of biblical scholarship, presented as collapsible accordion sections.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown Commentary (1871) — Scholarly and critical verse-by-verse analysis with grammatical observations and cross-references. Includes section introductions (Pentateuch, Poetical, Prophetical books), chronological reference tables (Parables, Miracles, Paul's Life), book introductions with author attribution (Jamieson, Fausset, or Brown), and section heading labels.
Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary (1706) — Full unabridged devotional and pastoral reflections with hierarchical sections: volume preface, Bible/Testament/section introductions, book introduction, chapter introduction, and verse commentary.
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary (1706) — Condensed edition with book introduction, chapter outline, and verse commentary.
Verse Study Sources
TSK — Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Originally compiled by R.A. Torrey (1834–1928), the TSK is one of the most extensive cross-reference systems ever produced, with 344,000+ verse-to-verse connections across both testaments. References are ranked by community votes from the OpenBible.info project.
Easton's — Easton's Bible Dictionary (M.G. Easton, 1897). A classic reference with 3,900+ entries covering biblical names, places, customs, and theological concepts. Articles include extensive scripture citations linking entries to relevant passages throughout the Bible. Indexed to 22,000+ verse references for contextual lookup.
Translations
The comparison spans five translations that represent the major milestones in English Bible translation. Each built upon its predecessors while incorporating advances in manuscript scholarship.
KJV (1611) — King James Version. Commissioned by King James I and produced by 47 scholars. Translated from the Textus Receptus (Greek NT) and the Masoretic Text (Hebrew OT). Its language shaped English literature for centuries and remains the most widely printed Bible in history.
ERV (1885) — English Revised Version. The first major scholarly revision of the KJV, undertaken by a committee of British scholars over 14 years. Incorporated readings from older manuscripts discovered since 1611, including Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, which predated the Byzantine manuscripts used for the KJV by several centuries.
ASV (1901) — American Standard Version. The American counterpart to the ERV, produced by the American revision committee. Known for consistently rendering the divine name as "Jehovah" and for more literal renderings than the ERV. Valued for study due to its word-for-word translation philosophy.
WEB (2000) — World English Bible. A public domain modern English translation based on the ASV, updated for contemporary readability while maintaining the ASV's literal translation philosophy. Replaces "Jehovah" with "Yahweh" for the divine name and uses modern pronouns throughout. An ongoing community-driven project freely available without copyright restrictions.
BSB (2020) — Berean Standard Bible. A modern translation based on the Nestle-Aland/UBS critical text (Greek NT) and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Hebrew OT). Balances literal accuracy with readability, incorporating over a century of additional manuscript discoveries and textual scholarship since the ASV.
The original-language source texts used in the interlinear view:
Nestle 1904 — Novum Testamentum Graece. Eberhard Nestle's Greek New Testament, a critical text that became the foundation for all subsequent Nestle-Aland editions. Now in the public domain, making it freely available for digital scholarship.
OSHB — Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible. A digital edition of the Westminster Leningrad Codex, the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible (dated 1008 CE). Includes full morphological parsing and lemma data for each word.
Data Completeness
The study data is comprehensive but not exhaustive. Here is a summary of coverage and known gaps.
Interlinear words — 441,000+ BSB words with original-language alignment covering all 31,086 verses. 382,000 KJV words, 138,000 Nestle 1904 Greek words, and 304,000 OSHB Hebrew words are linked via Strong's numbers.
Brief definitions — Available for all 14,196 Strong's numbers in the lexicon (5,500+ Greek via Dodson, 8,600+ Hebrew via Strong's).
Full definitions (Greek) — Abbott-Smith covers 5,300+ of 5,500 Greek entries (97%). A small number of rare or variant forms lack deep entries.
Full definitions (Hebrew) — BDB covers 5,600 of 8,600+ Hebrew entries (65%). The gap is primarily proper nouns and rare forms where BDB entries could not be matched to Strong's numbers. Coverage was improved using the OpenScriptures Lexical Index for direct BDB-to-Strong's mapping.
Louw-Nida domains — Available for 5,300+ Greek Strong's numbers (97%). Sourced from MACULA Greek annotations of the Nestle 1904 text.
LXX equivalents — Available for 4,100 of 8,600+ Hebrew Strong's numbers (47%). Not all Hebrew words appear in passages that have Septuagint parallels, and some particles and grammatical words lack meaningful Greek equivalents.
Cross-references — 344,000+ verse-to-verse connections. Most verses have at least one cross-reference, though some less-referenced passages may have none.
Dictionary — 3,900+ Easton's entries indexed to 22,000+ verse references. Coverage focuses on named persons, places, and key concepts. Many verses (especially those without named entities) will not have dictionary entries.
Manuscript variants — 934 New Testament words are annotated with manuscript tradition data. This covers the most significant textual variants but is not a complete critical apparatus.
KJV Morphology — Decoded morphology descriptions for all KJV words that have morphology codes. 136 Tyndale House codes covering Hebrew and Aramaic verb stems (OT), plus Robinson codes for Greek grammatical forms including declension suffixes (NT).
Commentaries — Two public domain commentaries spanning three centuries of biblical scholarship. Out of 31,086 total verses:
JFB (1871) — ~19,800 entries: verse commentary covering 30,637 verses (98.6%), 7 section introductions (4 prose essays + 3 chronological reference tables with scope-based retrieval), 49 book introductions with author attribution, and ~1,750 section heading labels extracted from the source text. Authored by Robert Jamieson (Genesis–Esther), A.R. Fausset (Job–Malachi, 1 Corinthians–Revelation), and David Brown (Matthew–Romans).
MH Complete (1706) — ~5,600 entries (4,300 verse-range + 66 volume prefaces + 7 scoped intro levels + 66 book introductions + 1,170 chapter summaries) covering 31,086 verses (100%). Complete coverage of all verses. Every book shows hierarchical intro levels: Holy Bible preface, Testament introduction, and section introduction (for Pentateuch, Historical, Minor Prophets, and Gospels).
MH Concise (1706) — ~5,200 entries (4,049 verse-range + 66 book introductions + 1,054 chapter outlines) covering 31,022 verses (99.8%) across 66 books. Remaining 64 uncovered verses are confirmed absent from the source text.
Map — 1,300+ ancient places geocoded to 8,700+ verse references. The Map tab appears only for verses that mention identifiable geographic locations. Coverage depends on OpenBible's identification database; some place names in poetic or metaphorical contexts may not be geocoded.
Red letter — Words of Jesus are marked in both BSB and KJV across the four Gospels, Acts, and Revelation. Coverage relies on the source data's attribution of direct speech.
Open Data & Attributions
All study data is sourced from open, freely available scholarly projects. The following attributions are provided in accordance with the Creative Commons licenses under which these works are shared. All licensed data has been parsed, reformatted, and integrated into our study database; no source data is redistributed in its original form.
Berean Standard Bible — Produced by Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee. Dedicated to the public domain. berean.bible
1Suddenly, as Jeroboam was standing beside the altar to burn incense, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the LORD.2And he cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD, “O altar, O altar, this is what the LORD says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David, and upon you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense upon you, and human bones will be burned upon you.’”13That day the man of God gave a sign, saying, “The LORD has spoken this sign: ‘Surely the altar will be split apart, and the ashes upon it will be poured out.’”4Now when King Jeroboam, who was at the altar in Bethel, heard the word that the man of God had cried out against it, he stretched out his hand and said, “Seize him!” But the hand he stretched out toward him withered, so that he could not pull it back.5And the altar was split apart, and the ashes poured out, according to the sign that the man of God had given by the word of the LORD.6Then the king responded to the man of God, “Intercede with the LORD your God and pray for me that my hand may be restored.”
So the man of God interceded with the LORD, and the king’s hand was restored to him as it was before.7Then the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.”8But the man of God replied, “If you were to give me half your possessions, I still would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place.9For this is what I was commanded by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came.’”10So the man of God went another way and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel.
The Old Prophet and the Man of God
11Now a certain old prophet was living in Bethel, and his sons 1 came and told him all the deeds that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told their father the words that the man had spoken to the king.12“Which way did he go?” their father asked.
And his sons showed him 1 the way taken by the man of God, who had come from Judah.13So the prophet said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.”
Then they saddled the donkey for him, and he mounted it14and went after the man of God. He found him sitting under an oak tree 1 and asked, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”
“I am,” he replied.15So the prophet said to the man of God, “Come home with me and eat some bread.”16But the man replied, “I cannot go home with you, and I will not eat bread or drink water with you in this place.17For I have been told by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water there or return by the way you came.’”18Then the prophet replied, “I too am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, so that he may eat bread and drink water.’”
The old prophet was lying to him,19but the man of God went back with him, ate bread in his house, and drank water.20While they were sitting at the table, the word of the LORD came to the prophet who had brought him back,21and the prophet cried out to the man of God who had come from Judah, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Because you have defied the word of the LORD and have not kept the commandment that the LORD your God gave you,22but you went back and ate bread and drank water in the place where He told you not to do so, your body shall never reach the tomb of your fathers.’”23And after the man of God had finished eating and drinking, the old prophet who had brought him back saddled the donkey for him.24As he went on his way, a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his body was left lying in the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside it.25And there were men passing by who saw the body lying in the road with the lion standing beside it, and they went and reported this in the city where the old prophet lived.26When the prophet who had brought him back from his journey heard this, he said, “It is the man of God who disobeyed the command of the LORD. Therefore the LORD has delivered him to the lion, and it has mauled him and killed him, according to the word that the LORD had spoken to him.”27Then the old prophet instructed his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled it,28and he went and found the body lying in the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside it. The lion had not eaten the body or mauled the donkey.29So the old prophet lifted up the body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back to his own city to mourn for him and bury him.30Then he laid the body in his own tomb, and they lamented over him, “Oh, my brother!”31After he had buried him, the prophet said to his sons, “When I die, you must bury me in the tomb where the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones,32for the message that he cried out by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel and against all the shrines on the high places in the cities of Samaria will surely come to pass.”33Even after these events, Jeroboam did not repent of his evil ways, but again he appointed priests for the high places from every class of people. He ordained anyone who desired to be a priest of the high places.34And this was the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to its extermination and destruction from the face of the earth.