We could start with the concordance in the back of our Bible to find other verses where ”merciful” is used. By comparing different verses, we can discover how the word is used and we may be finding some shades of meaning. If you have a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, you can do more. It would help to find every place in the Bible where the word “merciful” is found (see chart above). Strong’s provides a brief excerpt from each of the verses on the left side of the page. We have highlighted Matthew 5:7 and Hebrews 2:17 in the example below, since the same Greek word for merciful is used in both passages. The right column is a list of numbers which are keys to the actual Hebrew and Greek word that is used in each verse. For example, in Hebrews 2:17 the English word for merciful is a Greek word designated by Strong’s number of 1655. The same Greek word also occurs in Matt. 5:7. In both places the Greek word is translated as “merciful.” Notice that the Greek word translated as ”merciful” in all of the other verses is not 1655. They are different words which are translated as merciful and have a slightly different meaning. As an exercise, find Strong’s number for merciful in each of the following passages.

	Passage Where Merciful Occurs		Number for the Greek Word
	Luke 18:13
	James 5:11

Now what is the meaning of the word in Hebrews 2:17? We will start by comparing”merciful” in Heb 2:17, Luke 18:13 and James 5:11. What did you find? Sometimes it is hard to understand the difference. So Strong’s has provided short explanations of the meaning of each word in the back of the book (see an example in the chart below).