Bible word study

Adonai (Strong’s H136): Meaning in the Bible

Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) is the Hebrew word numbered H136 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as the Lord (used as a proper name of God only). In the King James Bible it is translated (my) Lord..

• Original wordאֲדֹנָי
• TransliterationʼĂdônây
• Pronunciationad-o-noy'
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH136
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. an emphatic form of H113;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Adonai appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Adonai (H136) stands behind 434 English renderings in 419 verses across 25 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Ezekiel (221), Psalms (53), Isaiah (48).

How the King James Bible renders Adonai, by count

• lord432 of 434 (100 percent)
• god1 of 434 (0 percent)
• lords1 of 434 (0 percent)

Three places to read Adonai

• Genesis 15:2 And Abram said, LORD God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?
• Jeremiah 2:19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
• Ezekiel 26:21 I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord GOD.

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Adonai in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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