Connecting Commands

Connecting commands set up relationships between expressions, so they must be preceded and followed by an expression. They are enclosed in angle brackets. In the following explanation and examples, X and Z stand for any valid expressions, and the search field pop-up menu is assumed to be set to Verse.

Note

NOT, FOLLOWED BY, PRECEDED BY, and WITHIN can be used in combination with each other but not with OR and XOR.

 

Connecting Command

Used To…

 Notes
AND

X <AND> Z finds verses where X and Z are both present. Example 1: The argument land <AND> promise finds every verse that contains both "land" and "promise."

Example 2: The argument love <AND> love will find only verses with two instances of the word love.

  
OR

X <OR> Z finds verses where either X or Z is present. Entering land <OR> promise finds every verse that contains either "land" or "promise" or both.

 Alternative words that are a part of a phrase are entered in parentheses and separated by commas. Thus, to search for verses that contain either the phrase "holy land" or the phrase "holy people", enter holy (land, people).
NOT

X <NOT> Z finds verses with X, but not Z. Entering land <NOT> promise finds every verse that contains "land" and does not contain "promise."

  
XOR

X <XOR> Z finds verses where only one of X or Z is present. The XOR command differs from the OR command in that it does not find cases where both expressions are present. Entering land <XOR> promise finds every verse that contains either "land" or "promise", but not both.

 Neither OR nor XOR can be used in combination with other connecting commands.
FOLLOWED BY

X <FOLLOWED BY> Z finds verses where X is followed by Z. Entering land <FOLLOWED BY> promise finds every verse that contains "promise" following "land."

 Hint

 

To find verses where X occurs twice, search for X <FOLLOWED BY> X.
PRECEDED BY

X <PRECEDED BY> Z finds verses where X is preceded by Z. Entering land <PRECEDED BY> promise finds every verse that contains "promise" preceding "land."

  
WITHIN

X <WITHIN ? Words> Z narrows the field of search between the two expressions to a range of words. Replace the question mark in the argument with a number. See the examples below.

  

Examples using the WITHIN Connecting Command

WITHIN Connecting Command Meaning
land <WITHIN 1 Words> promise "promise" must be adjacent to "land"
land <WITHIN 5 Words> promise "promise must be from 1 to 5 words away from "land" (0-4 intervening words)
A range of 5-7 "promise must be from 5 to 7 words away from "land"
A range of 5-5 "promise must be exactly 5 words away from "land"