i don't understand why you scoff at Angela's sound advice?
Strong's is a concordance and while it is an excellent one it is still a concordance explicitly linked to KJV translation. that is very useful when it is used as a concordance but that is not the same as a lexicon and should not be thought of or used as one.
copy-pasting an useful, informative article about what the difference is and why it matters, below
((source: https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/923/strongs-is-a-concordance-not-a-lexicon))
The
Strong's Concordance is a helpful tool that lists every Hebrew and Greek lemma (root word) present in the King James Bible. Along with listing these, the tool also generally gives a
'gloss' for each word (some tools actually link
Strong's Concordance to lexicons such as
Thayer's Greek-English lexicon). The tool is popular because it is free on many Bible-related websites. With that said, I'd like to give some advice (and caution) to users who rely on this tool for original languages research in the Biblical texts.
Giving credit where it is due, I found
a series of blog posts that address this superbly on the Armchair Theology site that have heavily influenced this post.
Strong's Concordance is not a lexicon
A lexicon gives an inventory of all of the
lexemes in a given language;
Strong's Concordance is based only on a specific
English translation (the KJV).
Hebrew-English, Aramaic-English, and Greek-English lexicons also function as dictionaries in that they define lexemes from the original language using English words that best capture their meaning, explaining any relevant grammatical features that impact their translation.
While
Strong's Concordance gives
a gloss for each lemma, this is not the main purpose of this tool and as such should not be used as a lexicon nor as a dictionary (a collection of glosses is rightly called a 'glossary'). Here are a few reasons why it is problematic to use
Strong's Concordance as a lexicon:
- Lexical ambiguity: Consider the following sentence: "She is looking for a match." Is the subject trying to light a candle or find a romantic partner? The 'gloss' definition here is ambiguous and gives us no help disambiguating the meaning in this context. Grammatical features should also be examined, which the Strong's Concordance offers no help with.1
- Nuances of meaning: Sometimes there is more than one meaning listed for a term (this is often the case for prepositions, but there are also verbs that change meaning depending on their voice and other grammatical features). Strong's Concordance offers no help when determining which (if any) gloss is most appropriate in context. Often knowledge of the original languages is required to determine what grammatical and contextual features are present in order to determine the correct gloss (if any). Also, authors can use the same word differently in differing contexts (such as James' and Paul's usage of the word 'faith').
The meaning of a lexeme is that intended by the author using it. The
Strong's Concordance often sheds little light on what this meaning is
in context.
Therefore, claiming the meaning of a specific word in a given context is X on the basis of the Strong's Concordance is not a reliable claim.
Etymological fallacies
I often see folks try to determine the meaning of words in specific contexts using their root lemmata. The problem here is that etymology and the later meaning of a word are often orthogonal concepts. Here are some examples:
Etymology is not the primary tool for understanding the meaning of a word in a specific context, and it is often meaningless when making such a determination.
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