Bible Search Help

The bible search can be used for searching the Bible in either of two ways, each explained below. The Bible translation on which the search tool is based, is the King James Version.

Verse Search
The verse search option can be used to search for a verse or a passage of scripture. In order to invoke the verse search, the opton "By Verse" must be selected from the drop-down menu and subsequently, the icon must be clicked. The general format of the search expression that must be entered in the input box is as follows:

<book_name> <begin_chapter>:<begin_verse>-<end_chapter>:<end_verse>

    where <begin_chapter>, <begin_verse> indicate the start of the passage and
             <end_chapter>, <end_verse> indicate the end of the passage

    e.g., The search query "1 Chronicles 2:25 - 3:20" is in the above format

The following points apply to verse search
  • The name of the book (<book_name>) can be simplified. It is sufficient to use the initial letters of the book name that uniquely identify it in the Bible. For instance "1 Chron 2:25 - 3:20" or "1 Chr 2:25 - 3:20" are valid searches in the Book of Chronicles.
  • For a search within the same chapter, <end_chapter> can be omitted from the above format. E.g., "Hosea 2:3-10" searches within the second chapter of the book of Hosea.
  • If the whole of a single chapter is to be searched, <begin_verse>, <end_chapter> and <end_verse> can be omitted. E.g., Ps 119 searches for the 119th Psalm.
  • If a whole book of the Bible is being searched, the only parameter needed in the above format is <book_name>. E.g., "Zech" searches for the whole book of Zechariah.
  • Please note that the checkboxes do not apply to the verse search

Text Search
The text search option can be used to search the Bible for a word or a phrase. Advanced searches using regular expressions is also supported.

A phrase can be searched in the Bible by entering it into the text box, choosing "By Text" in the drop-down menu and then clicking the icon . If the checkboxes are left unchecked, this action invokes a simple search which is insensitive to the case of characters. For example text search can be used to search for all occurences of the phrase "so loved" in the Bible.

The checkboxes apply to text search and they provide the following search options.
  • Case Sensitive Search: This option can be used if the intention is for the search engine to strictly match the case of each letter in the search phrase. For example, we can search for all occurences of the phrase "Lord" or "LORD" in the Bible.
  • Whole Word Search: This option can be used to limit the searches to the occurences of whole words. For example, suppose that all the occurences of "Levi" are being searched for. If the Whole Word checkbox is unchecked, the search results will display all occurences of "Levi", "Levites" and "leviathan". By checking the Whole Word checkbox, we can limit our searches to the name "Levi".
  • Regular Expression Search: This is an advanced search feature. A detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this page. However, interested readers are referred to the Perl Regular Expression Tutorial.