# The Average Bible Verse Is 30 Characters

> An average verse of the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified) is 30 Chinese characters long — 921,149 characters spread over 31,021 verses.

Question: average verse length in Chinese
Answer: 30 characters
Page: https://chinese-bible.com/en/reference/average-verse-length

Thirty characters is about fifteen to twenty words of Chinese, or roughly a line and a half on a phone. It is a useful figure for anyone planning a reading habit: a chapter of 775 characters is under four minutes at a fluent pace, and slower when every third word is new.

The spread is wide. The longest verse, Jeremiah 43:5, runs 97 characters; at the other end sit the four-character commandments of Exodus 20 and John 11:35 (耶稣哭了).

Verse length varies by genre more than by book: narrative and law run long, poetry short. The table gives the books with the longest and shortest average verse.

Across the whole text that is 921,149 characters in 31,021 verses, and about 21 segmented words in an average verse — enough that one unknown word in twenty tokens still means most verses contain one.

## Longest and shortest average verse, by book

| Book | Avg characters/verse | Verses | Characters |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Malachi | 42 | 55 | 2,310 |
| Jeremiah | 37 | 1,361 | 50,586 |
| Zephaniah | 37 | 52 | 1,939 |
| 2 Kings | 36 | 719 | 26,180 |
| 2 Chronicles | 36 | 821 | 29,469 |
| Ephesians | 26 | 154 | 3,938 |
| Philemon | 24 | 25 | 601 |
| Psalms | 22 | 2,452 | 53,904 |
| Job | 20 | 1,067 | 20,857 |
| Proverbs | 19 | 913 | 16,973 |


## Questions

**How many words is that?**

About 21 segmented words per verse on average.

**How long does a chapter take to read?**

An average chapter is 775 characters, about 3 minutes at 260 characters a minute.

**Are verse divisions original?**

No. Chapter and verse divisions are editorial, added long after the texts were written, which is why counts differ slightly between editions.

## Method

- Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain
- Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation)
- 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)
- Computed: 2026-09-22

These are reproducible counts over a public-domain text, not a peer-reviewed study. Difficulty ranks are one stated formula, not a validated readability score.


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- 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).
- Bible text: public domain — 和合本 · World English Bible · Louis Segond 1910.
- Built with https://chinese-bible.com