What “LXX” in Bible References Signifies

Most readers first meet the letters “LXX” in a study note or margin and wonder what they signify. The short answer is that “LXX” refers to the Septuagint — Greek Old Testament translation — the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures used widely by Jews throughout the Greek-speaking world before and during the time of Jesus. Those letters matter because the New Testament writers often quote the Old Testament in Greek, and at key points the wording of that Greek Old Testament differs from the standard medieval Hebrew tradition — the Masoretic Text. That intersection helps explain why a New Testament quotation sometimes sounds a bit different from the verse you see when you flip back to your English Old Testament (Romans 3:10–18; Hebrews 10:5–7).

The subject can feel technical, but the pastoral stakes are simple. God has spoken. He preserved His word through many hands and many centuries, and He brought it to us in languages and forms that real people use. Understanding why “LXX” appears in a note, why the apostles sometimes follow the Greek Old Testament wording, and how English translations make choices will not shake confidence in Scripture; it will deepen it. Jesus and His apostles treated the Scriptures as God’s word, true and binding, and their handling of both Hebrew and Greek witnesses honors the same Lord who promised that Scripture cannot be set aside (John 10:35; 2 Timothy 3:16–17).

Words: 2421 / Time to read: 13 minutes

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Historical and Cultural Background

The Septuagint’s story begins in the world that followed Alexander the Great. Greek became the common language across the eastern Mediterranean, and Jewish communities flourished from Egypt to Asia Minor. In that world, many synagogue-goers spoke Greek far better than Hebrew or Aramaic — Koine Greek, common Greek of NT era — and they needed the Law and the Prophets in the language of daily life. Over the third and second centuries before Christ, translators produced a Greek Pentateuch and then the rest of the Hebrew Bible, a process that happened in stages rather than in a single day. Later Jewish Greek books used by some — Deuterocanonical — were copied alongside, and in time the whole Greek collection came to be called “the Septuagint,” a name tied to a legendary account of seventy translators working in harmony, hence the shorthand “LXX.”

By the first century, Greek Scripture was read in many synagogues of the diaspora. When Paul walked into a synagogue in a city like Thessalonica, he could reason from the Scriptures in Greek and show that the Messiah had to suffer and rise, and that Jesus is that Messiah (Acts 17:1–3). The apostles preached into a world where Greek was the marketplace tongue, and Greek Scripture served that mission. At the same time, in Judea and Galilee, Hebrew scrolls and Aramaic teaching were living realities. The New Testament stands at the crossroads of these streams: it is written in Greek, it thinks in Hebrew ways, and it quotes Israel’s Scriptures with an eye to both their Hebrew and their Greek forms (Luke 4:16–21; Matthew 22:29–32).

As the centuries rolled on, the standard medieval Hebrew tradition — the Masoretic Text — was preserved with remarkable care by Jewish scribes who marked vowels and accents to guard pronunciation and sense. God used those guardians to hand us a stable Hebrew Bible. In His providence He also used the Greek Old Testament to carry the Scriptures across languages and borders and into the hands of the nations, so that the synagogue and later the church could say in many tongues, “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul” (Psalm 19:7).

Biblical Narrative

If we ask how the New Testament uses the Old Testament, the answer often runs through the Septuagint. When Jesus stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and read from Isaiah, Luke records the words in Greek drawn from Isaiah 61, a passage whose Greek form includes a line about recovery of sight that threads into His healing ministry and His announcement of Jubilee grace (Luke 4:18–19). When Matthew records that the virgin will conceive and bear a son, he follows Isaiah 7:14 as rendered by the Greek, where the word “virgin” is explicit, while the underlying Hebrew term can mean a young woman of marriageable age; Matthew sees in Jesus the fullness the promise always pointed toward (Matthew 1:22–23; Isaiah 7:14).

When Hebrews speaks of Christ coming into the world and says, “a body you prepared for me,” it follows the Greek form of Psalm 40, which highlights incarnation and obedience, themes Hebrews unfolds at length (Hebrews 10:5–7; Psalm 40:6–8). When Paul strings together a chain of accusations to show that none is righteous, he draws on several psalms in their Greek wording, fitting them to his argument that every mouth is stopped and the whole world held accountable to God (Romans 3:10–18; Psalm 14:1–3; Psalm 5:9; Psalm 140:3; Psalm 10:7). When James cites Amos to show that God always meant to include the nations, his words reflect the Greek Amos which speaks of the rest of mankind seeking the Lord, a line the Jerusalem council embraced as a Spirit-led explanation of what God was doing among the Gentiles (Acts 15:15–17; Amos 9:11–12).

In these scenes the apostles are not twisting Scripture; they are reading the same Old Testament the synagogue heard in Greek and showing that Jesus is its fulfillment. They honor the text as God’s voice and press it upon hearts with the authority of the One who said that everything written about Him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44–47). That is why even when wording differs slightly between the Greek and the Hebrew, the New Testament’s use flows from the same stream: God’s promise, God’s Messiah, God’s plan unfolding from ages past to the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4–5).

Theological Significance

The first question modern readers ask is whether differences between the Greek and the Hebrew unsettle confidence in Scripture. The short answer is no. Scripture teaches that all Scripture is God-breathed and useful to make us wise for salvation and fit for every good work, which grounds our confidence not in a myth of mechanical sameness but in God’s living voice conveyed through faithful witnesses (2 Timothy 3:15–17). God supervised the giving and preserving of His word through ordinary means, and He delighted to make that word run in many languages, so that people could hear of the Savior in their mother tongue (Psalm 147:19–20; Acts 2:6–11).

Still, the differences matter. Sometimes the Greek preserves a Hebrew reading older than the medieval tradition; sometimes it paraphrases to clarify; sometimes it reflects a different way of dividing clauses; sometimes it expands with explanatory phrases; and sometimes it sharpens a messianic angle that the New Testament draws forward. Comparing manuscripts to find original — textual criticism — recognizes that God has allowed us to see the streams and to weigh them with wisdom, always under the larger confession that the same Spirit who breathed out the word guides the church into truth (John 16:13; 2 Peter 1:20–21). Because the New Testament itself sometimes follows the Greek Old Testament, a faithful translation will note those places so readers can see how the apostles reasoned and worshiped.

Another question concerns translation philosophy. Word-for-word translation — formal equivalence — tries to stay close to the syntax and vocabulary of the source. Thought-for-thought translation — dynamic equivalence — aims to convey the meaning in natural modern phrasing. Both serve the church, and both have risks. Overly wooden wording can hide meaning from modern ears; overly free rephrasing can blur the author’s structure. Wise translations balance clarity and accuracy, and wise readers receive them as gifts, compare notes, and test interpretations by clear passages. What steadies this work is the conviction that God’s word is truth, that its center is Christ, and that its purpose is to make us wise unto salvation and holy in our walk (John 17:17; Luke 24:27; John 20:31).

A further issue touches the shape of the Old Testament canon. Later Jewish Greek books used by some — Deuterocanonical — sat beside the Greek Old Testament and were read in some early Christian settings. The Lord Jesus and His apostles never cite those books as Scripture in the way they cite the Law, Prophets, and Writings, and the pattern of “Moses and all the Prophets” or “Law and Prophets and Psalms” marks the boundaries they recognized (Luke 24:44; Matthew 23:35). The point for modern readers is not to harbor suspicion but to be clear about categories: the church receives the Hebrew Scriptures of Israel as its Old Testament, honors the Greek translation as a valuable witness, and hears the New Testament as the Spirit’s inspired record and explanation of Christ’s fulfillment.

For dispensational readers, the LXX question sits within a larger confidence that God’s promises unfold across time without erasing distinctions God Himself made. The church, indwelt by the Spirit, reads the same Old Testament that promised a future for Israel and a coming King, and it watches the apostles proclaim that Jesus died for sins and rose, opening the door of grace to all who believe now while also anchoring hope in the future appearing of the Lord in power and glory (Acts 1:6–11; Romans 11:25–29; Revelation 19:11–16). That is why the church can translate the Bible into every language on earth and still expect the same Christ to be seen and adored by every people and tongue (Revelation 7:9–10).

Spiritual Lessons and Application

One practical lesson is humility. When a margin note says “LXX,” it is inviting you to see how the apostles heard that passage and how God shepherded His word through time. Instead of assuming a mistake, pause and compare. When Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 and says the virgin will conceive, he is following the Greek form that made explicit what the promise contained, and he is saying that in Jesus the sign arrives in its richest sense (Matthew 1:22–23; Isaiah 7:14). When Hebrews says a body was prepared for the Son, it is drawing the line from the psalmist’s obedience to the incarnate obedience of Christ who came to do the Father’s will (Hebrews 10:5–10; Psalm 40:6–8). Seeing those links will make you worship rather than worry.

A second lesson is gratitude for translations. English readers live in a golden age of good Bibles. Some translations lean more toward word-for-word translation — formal equivalence — and others lean toward thought-for-thought translation — dynamic equivalence — but the best of them are done by teams who fear God and love accuracy. Read more than one. Notice the footnotes. When a note says “Hebrew reads X, LXX reads Y,” treat it as a chance to see the diamond from another angle, and then anchor your understanding in the plain sense of the text as the New Testament uses it and as the passage itself unfolds (Acts 17:11; 2 Timothy 2:15). God is not hiding the ball. He gives light to those who ask.

A third lesson is to keep the main thing central. The Scriptures testify about Christ. Jesus said that Moses wrote about Him, that the Prophets spoke of Him, and that the Psalms sing of Him, and He opened the minds of His disciples to understand the Scriptures in that way (John 5:39–40; Luke 24:44–47). That means that differences in wording must be weighed inside the larger truth that the Son is the Yes to all the promises of God, and that the Spirit inspired the apostles to preach Christ from the Old Testament in ways that honor both text and fulfillment (2 Corinthians 1:20; Acts 3:18–26). Your goal as a reader is not to chase trivia but to behold the Lord and to obey His voice today.

A final lesson is confidence without arrogance. Comparing manuscripts to find original — textual criticism — can sound like a specialist’s game, but the heart of it belongs to every believer: God’s word is reliable, and the God who gave it rules history. We can admit that scribes sometimes made small slips, that languages shift, and that translators must choose words, and we can still confess with joy that Scripture is able to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness so that we are equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16–17). That mixture of reverence and realism is exactly what the apostles model when they quote the Old Testament in Greek with full conviction that God is speaking.

Conclusion

“LXX” in a margin is not a threat to faith but a window into God’s wisdom. It reminds us that before and during the time of Jesus, many believers heard the Scriptures in Greek, and that the apostles often drew their quotations from that Greek text. It shows that God preserved His word along more than one path and brought both paths into the church’s hands so that Christ could be proclaimed among the nations. It teaches us to read carefully, to thank God for faithful translators, and to let the New Testament guide our hearing of the Old so that our confidence rests where it should: not in a single strand of transmission, but in the God who speaks and keeps His promises (Isaiah 55:10–11; Luke 24:27).

For modern readers, the way forward is simple and rich. Read the Bible daily. Welcome the footnotes as friends. Compare translations when a note mentions the Septuagint. Let Scripture interpret Scripture. Above all, let the center shine: the grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ. The more you see how the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings find their Yes in Him, the more every footnote, every variant, and every translation will turn your heart toward worship and obedience (John 1:17; Romans 15:4).

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18–19)