Search guide

Where search appears

Search lives in the same selector flow used for books and chapters. Open it from the selector header, or from the verse drawer by selecting a word or phrase and tapping Search. The in-app panel also links here for the full reference.

Search sources

Choose one or more sources before you search:

• Bibles — Published translation text and AI translation text. When Bibles is on, you can narrow results to specific published translations and AI translation combinations.
• My Notes — Highlights with saved notes on this device or account. My Notes is searched on-device with a simple text match.
• Commentaries & Footnotes — Explanatory notes and footnotes tied to verses.
• Articles & Appendices — Study articles, guides, and supplementary material.

Bible search defaults to the translation you are currently reading so the same verse is not repeated across every enabled version. You can add or remove translations before running a search, and the Search Sources row shows which translation(s) are selected — for example, Bible · REV — so you always know which text is being searched.

How matching works

The app picks the matching engine from your query automatically:

• By meaning (default) — Plain natural-language queries such as God is always with us use concept-aware matching. Results blend lexical similarity with semantic ranking so verses you half-remember can still surface even when the wording differs.
• Precise matching — Quotes, wildcards (*, ?), or boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) switch to exact lexical matching. Use this when you want strict word, phrase, or boolean control.
• Passage jumps — Short references such as jn1, rev 6 4, or ps23 open the passage directly instead of returning search hits. If a shorthand could mean more than one book, the app asks you to choose.
• Strong's numbers — Queries like G3056 or H3068 look up that original-language word directly and return a dedicated Original Language section, described below.

Bible results are grouped by translation. Commentary, article, and note results are grouped by source.

Strong's number lookups

Searching a Strong's number such as G3056 or H3068 returns a dedicated Original Language section rather than ordinary text hits. It opens with a summary card showing the original-language headword, its gloss, and per-corpus totals — for example, Greek New Testament 330 · Septuagint (Greek OT) 1,152.

• One row per verse — Results are grouped by book, with each row a single verse. The row shows the word's surface form as it appears in the original text, plus an occurrence count (×2, ×3) when it appears more than once in that verse.
• Your translation's rendering — Where word-alignment data exists, the row also shows how the translation you are reading renders the word, highlighted in the verse text. Verse context comes from your selected translation, falling back to another available text when needed.
• Corpus ordering — Greek numbers list Greek New Testament hits first, with Septuagint hits grouped after and labeled Septuagint (Greek OT). Hebrew numbers search the Hebrew Bible.

If a lookup comes back empty, check your Search Range: Hebrew numbers live in the Hebrew Bible, and Greek numbers in the New Testament and Septuagint, so a range from the other testament can rule out every match — the in-app message points this out. Not sure of a word's number? Tap the word in the reader to open Word Study, which shows its Strong's number.