# 心 Appears 660 Times in the Chinese Bible

> 心 (xīn), the word the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified) uses for "heart", occurs 660 times in 618 verses across 61 of the Bible's 66 books.

Question: how often does heart appear in the Bible
Answer: 660 times
Page: https://chinese-bible.com/en/reference/how-often-does-heart-appear

心 (xīn) is heart in both the physical and the figurative sense, and it is a component in dozens of other characters to do with feeling and thought — which makes it one of the most useful single characters in the book.

Counting is by segmented token: the text is split into words by matching against CC-CEDICT, and every occurrence of 心 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 20:5.

It is an HSK 3 word, so a learner at that level already knows it.

Every occurrence is reachable on this site: the word page for 心 lists the verses it appears in, and each one opens the chapter with the word highlighted in the reader.

## 心 in the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified)

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Occurrences | 660 |
| Verses containing it | 618 |
| Books it appears in | 61 of 66 |
| Pinyin | xīn |
| HSK level | HSK 3 |
| First occurrence | Genesis 20:5 |
| English gloss (CC-CEDICT) | heart;  mind;  intention |


## Questions

**Is 心 the only word used for "heart"?**

No. Chinese renders a single English word several ways, and this count is for 心 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.

## 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.


---

- 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