How many characters are in Joel in Chinese?

2,259 Chinese characters in total, written with 582 distinct characters, across 73 verses and 3 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Joel?

55.5% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 68.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.4% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Joel take to read in Chinese?

About 9 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Joel a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 52 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Joel in Chinese: 582 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Joel in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Joel responds to a devastating locust plague and turns it into a call to return, followed by a promise of the outpouring of the spirit.

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

Joel in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	3
Verses	73
Chinese characters	2,259
Distinct characters	582
Word tokens	1,548
Distinct words	588
Average verse	31 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	55.5%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	68.5%
Not in HSK 1-9	24.4%
Difficulty rank	52 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	9 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Joel uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	要	34
2	耶和华	33
3	必	20
4	有	15
5	人	14
6	使	14
7	神	12
8	日子	11
9	地	9
10	酒	8
11	大	8
12	说	8
13	百姓	8
14	哪	7
15	来	7
16	如	7
17	它们	7
18	当	6
19	子	6
20	谷	6

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

The easiest chapters of Joel

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Joel 2	57.1%	32	1,049
Joel 3	55.4%	21	623
Joel 1	52.8%	20	587

Read it

Joel 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 Joel in Chinese?: 2,259 Chinese characters in total, written with 582 distinct characters, across 73 verses and 3 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Joel?: 55.5% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 68.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.4% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Joel take to read in Chinese?: About 9 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Joel a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 52 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).