1 Kings in Chinese: 1,312 Characters
Answering: “how many characters in 1 Kings in Chinese”
Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON
1 Kings begins with Solomon, the building of the temple, and the division of the kingdom, then follows the parallel lines of Israel and Judah and the prophet Elijah.
Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of 1 Kings 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.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 22 |
| Verses | 816 |
| Chinese characters | 26,860 |
| Distinct characters | 1,312 |
| Word tokens | 19,091 |
| Distinct words | 2,208 |
| Average verse | 33 characters |
| HSK 1-3 word tokens | 58.2% |
| HSK 1-6 word tokens | 70.9% |
| Not in HSK 1-9 | 24.6% |
| Difficulty rank | 43 of 66 (1 = easiest) |
| Reading time | 103 min at 260 chars/min |
| Testament | Old Testament |
| # | Word | Occurrences in this book |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 王 | 369 |
| 2 | 说 | 359 |
| 3 | 耶和华 | 261 |
| 4 | 所罗门 | 166 |
| 5 | 人 | 157 |
| 6 | 以色列 | 155 |
| 7 | 儿子 | 123 |
| 8 | 有 | 116 |
| 9 | 去 | 112 |
| 10 | 殿 | 103 |
| 11 | 作 | 102 |
| 12 | 必 | 98 |
| 13 | 使 | 95 |
| 14 | 神 | 89 |
| 15 | 行 | 89 |
| 16 | 大卫 | 78 |
| 17 | 来 | 76 |
| 18 | 要 | 72 |
| 19 | 民 | 69 |
| 20 | 一 | 68 |
Function words excluded. Each word has its own page with pinyin, stroke order and the verses it appears in.
| Words |
|---|
| 亚比煞 忠义 幼童 抓伤 央 供养 白头 山神 头套 蒙眼 闷闷不乐 官吏 棚顶 木制 璎珞 轴 枢 |
17 found, capped at 40 per book.
| Chapter | HSK 1-3 | Verses | Characters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Kings 17 | 69.6% | 24 | 741 |
| 1 Kings 3 | 67.9% | 28 | 909 |
| 1 Kings 13 | 64.8% | 34 | 1,158 |
| 1 Kings 21 | 64% | 29 | 996 |
| 1 Kings 19 | 62.2% | 21 | 799 |
| 1 Kings 2 | 61.5% | 46 | 1,769 |
| 1 Kings 18 | 60% | 46 | 1,593 |
| 1 Kings 22 | 60% | 53 | 1,739 |
Read it
1 Kings 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 Kings in Chinese?
- 26,860 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,312 distinct characters, across 816 verses and 22 chapters.
- What HSK level do I need to read 1 Kings?
- 58.2% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 70.9% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.6% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
- How long does 1 Kings take to read in Chinese?
- About 103 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
- Is 1 Kings a good book to start with?
- Not the gentlest: it ranks 43 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: 2026-09-26, 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).