Read the verse without losing your place
Prodigal Verse turns Bible references on your WordPress site into links that show Bible verse tooltips the moment a reader hovers them. No new tab, no scrolling away, no losing the sentence they were in the middle of.
Every reference on this page is live. Hover one and see.
It works on what you have already written
You don’t have to mark anything up. Paul’s summary of the gospel sits in Romans 5:8, the best-known verse in the world is John 3:16, and the passage every anxious believer returns to is Philippians 4:6-7. None of those were tagged or formatted — they were typed as ordinary text, and the plugin found them.
That means the archive you have already published becomes hoverable the day you activate it. A decade of sermon notes, every devotional, every blog post, with no editing.
Or hang the verse on your own words
Sometimes the citation isn’t what you want the reader to see. You’d rather write the words themselves. So instead of pointing at Ephesians 2:8-9, you can write that we are saved by grace through faith and let the phrase carry the verse.
Hover that phrase, and hover this one: for God so loved the world. Same feature, but the sentence reads like writing instead of a footnote.
Pick a translation, per verse if you want
Your site has a default translation, and any single reference can override it. Here is the shepherd psalm in the King James: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures[/prodigal_verse ] — and the same passage in the Berean Standard Bible: "PsalmHe makes me lie down in green pastures[/prodigal_verse ].You can also gather several passages into one tooltip, which helps when a point rests on more than one text: "JohnGod moved first.
How to use it
1. Do nothing
Activate the plugin and the references you have already written start working. For most sites that is the entire setup.
2. Click the button
The editor toolbar gets an Insert Bible Verse button. Select the words you want to carry the verse, click it, type the reference, and you will see the verse text before you insert anything. It works in the block editor, the classic editor, and Elementor’s Text Editor.
Click it without selecting anything and you can type the link text yourself — or leave that empty and the reference itself becomes the link.
3. Write the shortcode by hand
The button writes this for you, but it is plain text and you can type it anywhere:
for God so loved the worldA specific translation:
for God so loved the world (KJV)A range, or several passages at once:
Ephesians 2:8-9John 3:16; Romans 5:8And if you want the reference itself to be the link, leave out the text:
John 3:16Book names are forgiving. John, Jn, 1 Corinthians, 1Cor, I Corinthians, Psalm and Psalms all work, in any capitalization.
What you can control
Everything lives on one settings screen, with five choices and nothing else:
- Your default translation — World English Bible, King James Version, or Berean Standard Bible.
- Automatic linking — on by default, and you can switch it off entirely if you would rather mark up every verse yourself.
- Whole-chapter references — off by default, so “Psalm 23” on its own is left alone until you ask for it.
- Never link these — a list of phrases to leave alone, for the rare case where something on your site is matched by mistake.
- The “Read full chapter” link — on by default, and one checkbox removes it from your pages completely.
Three translations, included
The World English Bible, the King James Version and the Berean Standard Bible ship inside the plugin. Not a sample, not the popular verses — all sixty-six books of each, every chapter, every verse.
Nothing leaves your server
This is the part worth being plain about. Prodigal Verse makes no external requests at all. There is no API key to request, no account to create, no service to sign up for, and no third party watching your visitors.
The verse text is already on your server, so a tooltip opens instantly, it keeps working if the internet has a bad day, and your readers’ browsing never becomes someone else’s data. It sets no cookies and tracks nothing.
It also never rewrites your posts. The linking happens as the page is drawn, so if you ever deactivate the plugin your writing is exactly as you left it.
Built for people who quote Scripture constantly
Churches, ministries, devotional writers, teachers — anyone whose posts are full of references. The plugin is free, has no paid tier, shows no ads in your dashboard, and asks you for nothing.