Using Interlinear Bibles

Understanding the Bible in its original languages opens up incredible depth and meaning—but it can feel intimidating if you’re not fluent in Hebrew or Greek. Olive Tree’s Hebrew-English and Greek-English Interlinear Bibles make it easy for anyone to study Scripture in the original text, whether you’re proficient in the languages or have only used a Strong’s Bible.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to use an Interlinear Bible in the Olive Tree Bible App. We’ll use the ESV Greek-English Interlinear on iOS as an example, but the steps work for any interlinear in any of our apps.

If you haven’t downloaded your Interlinear Bible yet, you’ll find links in this article to install it on your devices.

How the Interlinear Bible is Structured 

When you open an interlinear, each verse is displayed in three lines: 

  • Top Line: Greek or Hebrew translation (Note: our Hebrew Interlinear lists two lines of Hebrew text. The first line is the word as it appears in the Hebrew Bible. The second line is the morphemes, which are the forms you would find in a dictionary or lexicon.)
  • Middle Line: English translation
  • Final Line: Strong's or GK number
  • A full English translation of the verse so you can read the passage smoothly. 

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Tap for Instant Word Details 

The Interlinear Bible isn’t just static text—it’s interactive. 

Tap a Greek or Hebrew word to see parsing data and dictionary definitions in a pop-up window:

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Tap an English word to quickly view its corresponding Strong’s definition:

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Tap a Strong’s number to open a pop-up with details on that entry: 

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Dig Deeper with Search & Lookup Tools

The Interlinear makes it simple to search for a Greek or Hebrew word. Tap Search at the bottom of the pop-up window, and you’ll see a list of every place that Strong’s number appears in the Bible:

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You can also tap Lookup to open dictionary entries from the Hebrew and Greek resources you’ve downloaded. This gives you access to more detailed information about the selected word: 

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Conclusion

We hope that this introduction to using Interlinear Bibles in the Olive Tree Bible App has been helpful for you. You can find all of our interlinear Bibles on our website!

If you have any more questions, please submit a request to our Customer Support team here. They are happy to help!

Have more questions? Submit a request