How many characters are in Psalms in Chinese?

53,904 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,747 distinct characters, across 2,452 verses and 150 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Psalms?

61.4% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 73.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 20.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Psalms take to read in Chinese?

About 207 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Psalms a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 22 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Psalms in Chinese: 1,747 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Psalms in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Psalms is the Bible's book of songs and prayers — 150 poems of lament, praise, protest and thanksgiving, gathered over centuries. Individual psalms are short, which makes them a natural place to start reading.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Psalms on this site: characters from the simplified text, words from its segmentation, HSK levels from the word lists. The difficulty rank compares this book with the other 65 by the share of word tokens at HSK 1-3.

Psalms in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	150
Verses	2,452
Chinese characters	53,904
Distinct characters	1,747
Word tokens	38,881
Distinct words	3,490
Average verse	22 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	61.4%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	73.5%
Not in HSK 1-9	20.2%
Difficulty rank	22 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	207 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Psalms uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	耶和华	746
2	要	587
3	人	461
4	神	443
5	求	370
6	必	279
7	使	261
8	因	226
9	愿	209
10	地	178
11	有	173
12	说	139
13	永远	129
14	慈爱	124
15	叫	117
16	赞美	105
17	用	105
18	名	104
19	一切	103
20	行	102

Function words excluded. Each word has its own page with pinyin, stroke order and the verses it appears in.

Words that occur in Psalms and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
追究无倚无靠偏斜世世训词啼浆默念丈量咬牙倒流趋向宽广稳当油滑扶犁守夜细察瞪着眼救助门户瞻仰地保

27 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Psalms

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Psalms 131	83.1%	3	84
Psalms 100	74%	5	109
Psalms 28	72.2%	9	273
Psalms 121	70.5%	8	133
Psalms 142	68.8%	7	191
Psalms 54	68.4%	7	149
Psalms 101	68%	8	209
Psalms 63	68%	10	229

Read it

Psalms in the parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side. Or take its vocabulary deck first, ordered by how often each word occurs in this book.

Questions

How many characters are in Psalms in Chinese?: 53,904 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,747 distinct characters, across 2,452 verses and 150 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Psalms?: 61.4% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 73.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 20.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Psalms take to read in Chinese?: About 207 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Psalms a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 22 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

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 these numbers were produced

Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain — 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,021 verses.
Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation). A different segmenter gives slightly different word counts; character counts are unaffected.
HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9.
Reading times: 260 characters a minute — an assumption about a fluent adult reader, not a measurement.
Computed: 2026-09-22, from the text on this site.

These are counts anyone can reproduce from the published dataset. They are not a peer-reviewed linguistic study, and the difficulty rankings are one stated formula rather than a validated readability score.

Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike. Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).