Advanced Bible Word Search Features

The Advanced Bible Search provides increased power, giving you the ability to find exactly the verse(s) you’re looking for. A link to the Advanced Bible Search is located on the Bible Search page as well as at the top of each Bible Word Search Results page.

Keyboard Shortcut

Whenever you are on a page that has a Bible Search box, press Alt + S (Windows) or Ctrl + S (Mac) to immediately jump to the Bible Search.

Exact Phrase

To find verses that contain a phrase in which all of the words appear together in the exact order you entered them, use the exact phrase field of the Advanced Bible Search. When using the exact phrase field of the Advanced Bible Search, it is not necessary to enclose the phrase in quotation marks.

Searching for exact phrases can also be done from the Standard Bible Search. Simply enclose the phrase in “quotation marks” and it will be treated as a exact phrase. For example, to find verses containing the exact phrase water of life, enter:

Without Words

To exclude verses that contain certain words or phrases, enter those words or phrases in the without words field of the Advanced Bible Search.

Excluding words or phrases can also be done from the Standard Bible Search by adding a minus sign, or hypen, ("-") immediately in front of each word that you wish to exclude. (Be sure to place a space before the minus sign unless it’s the first word in your query.) For example, to find verses containing Holy, but not Spirit, enter:

Beginning With

To find verses that begin with a certain word or phrase, enter the word or phrase into the beginning with field of the Advanced Bible Search. When using the Advanced Bible Search, there is no need to enclose a phrase in quotation marks.

You may also restrict your search to verses beginning with a certain word or phrase from the Standard Bible Search. To do so, simply preceed the word or phrase with the word “begin” and a colon (“:”). If you wish to find verses beginning with a certain phrase but you’re not using the Advanced Search, then you must enclose that phrase in quotation marks. (Note that you must not have a space before or after the colon.) For example, to find verses beginning with the word “blessed,” enter:

Likewise, to find verses beginning with the phrase “blessed is the man,” enter:

Ending With

The ending with feature is very similar to beginning with. You may use the Advanced Bible Search to restrict your search to verses ending with only a certain word or phrase. When using the Advanced Search, there is no need to enclose a phrase in quotation marks.

Match

This selects how we decide if a verse is a “match” for a particular word when searching the Bible. Beginning Of Each Word matchs any verse that contains a word that begins with the same letters as the word you are searching for. For example, a search for love, would also return verses containing loved and loves. Exact Word Only matchs only verses that contain the exact word you are searching for. For example, a search for love will return only verses that contain the word love, but will not return verses containing loves or loved unless they contain the exact word love.

When you know that you want to return results that contain only the exact word you enter, then this is an easy way to narrow your results.

Search in

This lets you restrict your search to a certain book or group of books of the Bible.

Results Per Page

This sets how many Bible verses will be shown on one page of Bible Word Search results.

Context

When checked, the verses immediately surrounding the verse that matches your search will also be shown even though they may not match your search.

Footnotes

When checked, if a verse contains footnotes, they will be shown immediately below the verse itself.