How many characters are in 1 Samuel in Chinese?

28,433 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,328 distinct characters, across 809 verses and 31 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read 1 Samuel?

57.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 70.4% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.1% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does 1 Samuel take to read in Chinese?

About 109 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is 1 Samuel a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 42 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

1 Samuel in Chinese: 1,328 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in 1 Samuel in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

1 Samuel spans the last of the judges, the prophet Samuel, the reign of Saul as Israel's first king, and the rise of the young David.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of 1 Samuel 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.

1 Samuel in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	31
Verses	809
Chinese characters	28,433
Distinct characters	1,328
Word tokens	20,414
Distinct words	2,215
Average verse	35 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	57.7%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	70.4%
Not in HSK 1-9	24.1%
Difficulty rank	42 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	109 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words 1 Samuel uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	说	445
2	扫罗	323
3	耶和华	318
4	大卫	306
5	人	295
6	去	163
7	拿	162
8	亚	149
9	母	140
10	撒	137
11	耳	137
12	非利士人	131
13	来	114
14	有	110
15	王	104
16	神	99
17	必	97
18	要	94
19	约	88
20	以色列	86

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

Words that occur in 1 Samuel and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
锉查点列队戟决意多益疯癫疯子虼蚤侵赔罪老鼠匣子厨役

15 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of 1 Samuel

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
1 Samuel 30	63.3%	31	1,002
1 Samuel 25	62.6%	43	1,563
1 Samuel 9	62.2%	27	1,061
1 Samuel 20	62%	42	1,403
1 Samuel 29	61.7%	11	483
1 Samuel 19	61.6%	24	803
1 Samuel 16	60.8%	23	867
1 Samuel 22	60.1%	23	882

Read it

1 Samuel 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 1 Samuel in Chinese?: 28,433 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,328 distinct characters, across 809 verses and 31 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read 1 Samuel?: 57.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 70.4% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.1% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does 1 Samuel take to read in Chinese?: About 109 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is 1 Samuel a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 42 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).