If you take Bible study notes in Obsidian, you know the friction of switching between apps just to look up a verse. The Obsidian Bible Reference plugin removes that friction entirely — type double hyphens followed by a reference (like --John3:16) and the full passage appears inline, ready to weave into your notes.^1
Built by developer Tim under the Antioch Tech banner, this free and open-source plugin (MIT license) supports multiple Bible translations including WEB, KJV, NVI (Spanish), CUV (Chinese), and Korean RNKSV, powered by BibleAPI.com and BollsLifeAPI.^2 It works across every platform Obsidian runs on — desktop and mobile, from Windows and macOS to Linux, iOS, and Android.^1 Beyond the core double-hyphen trigger, the plugin offers a Verse Lookup Modal (accessible via command palette or a book icon), a "Verse of the Day" feature, and customizable formatting options for how references render in your notes.^1
Silently launched in 2021, the project has grown steadily through a global community of 57 contributors and generous sponsors, surpassing 32,000 downloads and 800 daily active users.^1
Why Christians Love It"For me it is an invaluable tool in my daily Bible and systematic theology studies. Please keep being awesome!" — Chris, sponsor and user^3
"I just got the project up and running in my obsidian notes and it works amazing! This is exactly what I was looking for to take my Bible study notes. God Bless!" — Kyle^3
"I just wanted to thank you for your invaluable work on the OBR plugin, it's been indispensable in my daily Bible studies for several months now." — Samej^3
Notable- 315 GitHub stars and 107 releases as of early 2026, with the most recent release (v26.02.01) adding Korean translation support and cross-chapter formatting fixes^2
- Actively maintained with 801 commits and regular dependency updates^2
- Part of the Antioch Tech project family, which also includes Bible Vector Search, an AI-powered semantic Bible search tool^2
- Featured in the Obsidian Hub's guide for religious uses of Obsidian^5
