New to Bible Gateway Plus? Becoming a member puts a library of commentaries, study notes, and Greek & Hebrew language tools right in your pocket. It’s the easiest way for Bible Gateway lovers to simplify and deepen their personal or group study of the Bible!

And we’ve just added a new feature that will change the way you do word studies on Bible Gateway. Members now have the ability to apply the Reverse Interlinear Bible to passage pages in the New International Version (NIV)—putting the original-language words below the English Bible text.

This powerful feature is paired with the notes of the NIV Exhaustive Concordance Dictionary. You can select an original language word to open its entry in the right-hand sidebar. Here you’ll find information on that word, how it’s translated in the NIV, and how frequently each translated word appears.

[Click here for more information on Interlinear and Reverse-Interlinear Bibles and how they’re used.]

How to use the Reverse-Interlinear

The following is an explanation for how to use this new Reverse-Interlinear function, which can be found by Bible Gateway Plus Members under the options icon on passage pages.

After you’ve logged in to Bible Gateway Plus, make sure your selected translation is set to New International Version (NIV).

On any passage page, select the page options icon above the Bible text, and check the “Reverse Interlinear” option.

Doing so will automatically apply the original-language text from the NIV Reverse Interlinear Bible: English to Hebrew and English to Greek below the English. It will look something like this:

Remember that language translation isn’t a one-to-one process. Often an entire English phrase is needed to effectively illustrate an original-language word, which is why there are fewer Hebrew words in this example. If you’re fluent in Hebrew or Greek, you’ll also see that the word and readability favors the English, since this is a reverse interlinear. You can see what an interlinear Bible looks like here.

Hovering over a word will highlight all of that word’s occurrences for the passage you’re currently on. You can then select a word to open its NIV Exhaustive Concordance Dictionary entry in the right-hand sidebar, which will look something like this:

Here, you’ll find information such as the G/K number, a transliteration, parts of speech, related words, a concise definition, how often that original-language word is translated, and what it’s translated to in the New International Version.

There’s a lot of information in these entries, and different people will find use for different parts. You may only be interested in the definition portion or you may only want to see how many times that word appears in the original.

Find a full breakdown of the concordance dictionary entries on our resource page.

You don’t have to be a Bible scholar or be fluent in ancient Hebrew to learn more about the words behind your modern English Bible. If you want to learn more about word studies or biblical concordances, we have a dedicated blog page here where you can find a trove of helpful resources.