恩典 Appears 59 Times in the Chinese Bible
Answering: “how often does grace appear in the Bible”
Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON
恩典 (ēndiǎn) is the standard rendering of grace, and it is far rarer than English readers expect — related words such as 恩 and 怜悯 carry part of the same ground, which is why a single count answers a narrower question than it appears to.
Counting is by segmented token: the text is split into words by matching against CC-CEDICT, and every occurrence of 恩典 as its own word is counted. A verse that uses it twice counts twice in the total and once in the verse count, which is why the two figures differ. Its first occurrence in canonical order is Genesis 20:13.
It is outside the HSK 1-9 word lists, which is normal for vocabulary specific to Scripture — 22.5% of the Bible's word tokens are unlevelled.
Every occurrence is reachable on this site: the word page for 恩典 lists the verses it appears in, and each one opens the chapter with the word highlighted in the reader.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Occurrences | 59 |
| Verses containing it | 54 |
| Books it appears in | 24 of 66 |
| Pinyin | ēn diǎn |
| HSK level | not in HSK 1-9 |
| First occurrence | Genesis 20:13 |
| English gloss (CC-CEDICT) | favor; grace |
Questions
- Is 恩典 the only word used for "grace"?
- No. Chinese renders a single English word several ways, and this count is for 恩典 exactly as segmented. Related words are counted on their own pages, and the site's search finds any of them across all 31,021 verses.
- Does the traditional-character text give the same count?
- Yes for this word's count, because counting happens on the simplified text and the traditional edition of the same verses differs only in how characters are written — 1,909 distinct characters are written differently, but the words are the same.
- How can I learn this word?
- The word page carries its pinyin, stroke order, character breakdown and the verses it occurs in, and it can be saved to a flashcard deck and exported to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
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).