岂 Opens 289 Rhetorical Questions
Answering: “what does qi mean in Chinese”
Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON
岂 opens a rhetorical question whose answer is already known and is usually 'no'. It has no HSK level at all, and the prophets are full of it.
- HSK level
- beyond
- derived from its own words
- In the Bible
- 289
- clauses
- Meet it first in
- Job
- where it is commonest
- How sure
- Counted
- 100% of a checked sample
Practise it
Tap the words that carry the pattern.
，？
The same verses, in full
Easiest first: ranked by how much of each verse sits at or below HSK beyond, the point’s own level. Colours are tones. Nothing here was written for the page — every line is in the text.
二èr人rén若ruò不同bù tóng心xīn，岂qǐ能néng同行tóng háng呢ne？
Do two walk together, unless they have agreed?
Amos 3:3 · 100% of this verse’s words are at or below the point’s own HSK level
官guān长zhǎng或是huò shì法利赛人fǎ lì sài rén岂qǐ有yǒu信xìn他tā的de呢ne？
Have any of the rulers or any of the Pharisees believed in him?
John 7:48 · 100% of this verse’s words are at or below the point’s own HSK level
我wǒ岂qǐ是shì向xiàng人rén诉冤sù yuān？ 为何wèi hé不bù焦急jiāo jí呢ne？
As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn’t I be impatient?
Job 21:4 · 100% of this verse’s words are at or below the point’s own HSK level
人rén若ruò怀里huái lǐ搋chuāi火huǒ， 衣服yī fu岂qǐ能néng不bù烧shāo呢ne？
Can a man scoop fire into his lap, and his clothes not be burned?
Proverbs 6:27 · 100% of this verse’s words are at or below the point’s own HSK level
他们tā men说shuō： 神shén怎能zěn néng晓得xiǎo de？ 至高zhì gāo者zhě岂qǐ有yǒu知识zhī shi呢ne？
They say, “How does God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
Psalms 73:11 · 100% of this verse’s words are at or below the point’s own HSK level
约瑟yuē sè对duì他们tā men说shuō：「不要bú yào害怕hài pà，我wǒ岂qǐ能néng代替dài tì 神shén呢ne？
Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for am I in the place of God?
Genesis 50:19 · 100% of this verse’s words are at or below the point’s own HSK level
Go and meet it in the text
- Read Amos 3 — where the first example above comes from, with every word tappable.
- The rest of HSK beyond grammar — the other points at this level, with their counts.
What the Bible does with it
岂能代替他作主呢 — am I in God's stead? 岂可任我渴死 — shall I now die of thirst? 岂 marks the whole question as one that expects a particular answer, and it very often ends with 呢 or 吗 as well, so the clause is bracketed at both ends.
The Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified) uses 岂 289 times. 0 of those occurrences are the same words doing something else.
It has no HSK level at all. No course teaches it, because nobody speaks this way now — and it is everywhere in Job, the prophets and Paul's letters, which are exactly the parts of the book that argue. Modern Chinese does the same job with 难道.
It is commonest in Job, with 67 of them, and 88% of all of them fall in the Old Testament — which is mostly a statement about length, since the Old Testament is the longer part of the book.
| Word | Reading | HSK | Occurrences |
|---|---|---|---|
| 岂 | qǐ | not graded | 289 |
The HSK column is the level data/dict.json gives the word, and it is what puts this point at level beyond.
| Occurrences | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| the construction | 289 | 100% |
| the same words doing something else | 0 | 0% |
| Book | Clauses |
|---|---|
| Job | 67 |
| Isaiah | 30 |
| Jeremiah | 24 |
| 2 Kings | 13 |
| Ezekiel | 13 |
Counted from what the rule matched, before the audit — a ranking, not a published total.
| Word | Reading | HSK | Occurrences | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 为何 | wèi hé | 6 | 193 | 'why', where the question is genuine |
| 难道 | nán dào | 3 | 53 | the modern rhetorical opener |
The candidates are chosen by hand; the counts are measured, and a candidate the corpus cannot illustrate with a real verse is left out. No claim is made that they are interchangeable.
Counted
The rule: 岂 with another word after it in the same clause.
30 of 289 matches were drawn at random and read in context; 100% were right. Checked by Claude Opus 5, reading each sampled clause in context; not a native speaker. Recall is not measured: this is what the rule finds, not everything the translation contains.
This point is HSK beyond because that is the highest HSK level of the point's own function words, as data/dict.json grades them; a word the HSK lists do not grade sends the point to 'beyond'.
Questions
- How do I answer a 岂 question?
- You are not meant to. It is an assertion wearing a question mark, and the expected answer — almost always no — is part of what the sentence is claiming.
- How often does it occur in the Chinese Bible?
- 289 clauses in the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified), out of 289 occurrences of the words that mark it.
- Which book of the Bible uses it most?
- Job, with 67 — followed by Isaiah (30), Jeremiah (24), 2 Kings (13).
- How do you know the count is right?
- The rule is: 岂 with another word after it in the same clause. 30 of its 289 matches were drawn at random and checked one by one; 100% were right. Recall is not measured, so the figure is what this rule finds, not everything the translation contains.
Related reference pages
Take it further
- 97 ready-made vocabulary decks — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
- Printable 田字格 worksheets — passages with pinyin, meanings and tracing rows.
- The parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side, every word tappable.
- The dataset behind these numbers — plain JSON, free to reuse with attribution.
How this was measured
Edition: Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified). Every figure comes from one pass over all 1,189 chapters and 31,021 verses, 650,628word tokens in total, using the site’s own segmentation. A construction count is published only when a hand-checked sample of the rule that found it was at least 90% correct; between 70% and that it is published as an approximation, and below it no count is published at all. Generated 2026-09-26.