How many characters are in Isaiah in Chinese?

43,651 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,904 distinct characters, across 1,290 verses and 66 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Isaiah?

56.9% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 70% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 22.9% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Isaiah take to read in Chinese?

About 168 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Isaiah a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 45 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Isaiah in Chinese: 1,904 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Isaiah in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Isaiah spans judgement and consolation across sixty-six chapters, from eighth-century Jerusalem to visions of return and renewal. It is the most quoted prophet in the New Testament.

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

Isaiah in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	66
Verses	1,290
Chinese characters	43,651
Distinct characters	1,904
Word tokens	31,113
Distinct words	3,754
Average verse	34 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	56.9%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	70%
Not in HSK 1-9	22.9%
Difficulty rank	45 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	168 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Isaiah uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	必	674
2	耶和华	481
3	要	371
4	人	356
5	说	329
6	使	237
7	地	145
8	有	143
9	神	126
10	因	123
11	像	117
12	亚	109
13	来	105
14	事	94
15	就是	91
16	以色列	88
17	行	82
18	王	78
19	用	77
20	主	77

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

Words that occur in Isaiah and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
焚毁宣飞龙一夜之间薄刷棕奇迹剪断戍伸开必修传言大茴香打小微细并吞不识字声说不利得力飞快高明吝啬

40 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Isaiah

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Isaiah 39	66.4%	8	321
Isaiah 63	65.5%	19	712
Isaiah 12	65.4%	6	186
Isaiah 43	65.3%	28	914
Isaiah 64	64.5%	12	364
Isaiah 41	64.3%	29	972
Isaiah 48	64.1%	22	761
Isaiah 53	62.4%	12	471

Read it

Isaiah 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 Isaiah in Chinese?: 43,651 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,904 distinct characters, across 1,290 verses and 66 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Isaiah?: 56.9% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 70% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 22.9% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Isaiah take to read in Chinese?: About 168 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Isaiah a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 45 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).