How to Store Definitions in Scripture Notes

Have you ever thought about how to save the meaning of a word or a name next to all the instances of that word or name? Here’s a few ways I do it depending on the circumstances.

Being able to look up words in Webster’s 1828 dictionary or Strong’s Hebrew/Greek Concordance on the Blue Letter Bible site is built into Scripture Notes so you can find definitions very easily.

When you find a definition for a word or name, use one of the following methods to save it into your notes.

Method 1: Saving to Verse Notes

If there aren’t too many results (or if you only want it in one verse) you can just copy and paste the definition into the note field for all the verses. For instance, the word “slack” only appears 8 times in scripture. That’s small enough I just wanted to paste it into each of the verses so it’s always there for me to see.

Method 2: Saving to Footnotes

Another way to do it for small sets of notes is to use the footnote feature. Double-click a word and click “FN” to set the footnote for it. Then click that word later and the footnote will pop up.

Method 3: Saving to a Collection Note

Sometimes though, you might not want to clutter up the note field with a certain definition, or it’s not important enough to look at instantly when you are reading a verse. Sometimes there are so many verses you wouldn’t want to take the time to save the note into all the verse note fields.

In these instances it makes sense to save the definition into the title field of a collection note because once a verse is part of a collection, you can just click on the green eye icon by a verse to see the collection note titles and thus see the definition without having to go look it up again.

All you have to do is pull up a search pane and search for the word, and then click create collection note at the top. Then save the word and definition into the title area.

Here’s an example of the name Bathsheba which appears 10 times in the Bible. I put the meaning of the name in the title (“daughter of an oath”), and then I decided to tag it with the word “definition” so I can see words I’ve defined in collection notes in my tag tree when I click on that word. That’s not necessary, but I’m experimenting with it to see how I like it. I could also put the word/name itself into the tag area if I wanted to.

Here’s another example of the word kindle which has 110 verses which is too many for me to paste a definition into.

Here is what the tag tree will show for these.

I have used all 3 of these methods depending on the situation. It really comes down to what’s easiest to do at the moment. Sometimes I just save a definition into a single verse note and don’t take the time to do this, but these other methods come in handy when you want to save a definition across multiple verses.