How many characters are in 2 Kings in Chinese?

26,180 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,283 distinct characters, across 719 verses and 25 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read 2 Kings?

56.8% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 69.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 25.3% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does 2 Kings take to read in Chinese?

About 101 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is 2 Kings a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 49 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

2 Kings in Chinese: 1,283 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in 2 Kings in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON

2 Kings continues the divided monarchy through Elisha and a succession of kings to the fall of Samaria and the Babylonian exile of Judah.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of 2 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.

2 Kings in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	25
Verses	719
Chinese characters	26,180
Distinct characters	1,283
Word tokens	18,320
Distinct words	2,114
Average verse	36 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	56.8%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	69.5%
Not in HSK 1-9	25.3%
Difficulty rank	49 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	101 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words 2 Kings uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	王	420
2	说	384
3	耶和华	281
4	人	216
5	去	161
6	儿子	145
7	利	133
8	以色列	119
9	约	115
10	来	113
11	沙	106
12	犹大	102
13	行	97
14	必	84
15	年	83
16	殿	73
17	作	69
18	有	67
19	事	67
20	要	66

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

Words that occur in 2 Kings and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
好不瓦匠施与米拿现图样缦人造火车秃头

9 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of 2 Kings

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
2 Kings 4	68.5%	44	1,465
2 Kings 20	65.8%	21	760
2 Kings 2	62.9%	25	996
2 Kings 5	61.3%	27	1,094
2 Kings 1	61.2%	18	747
2 Kings 7	61.2%	20	855
2 Kings 9	60.9%	37	1,383
2 Kings 6	60.7%	33	1,174

Read it

2 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 2 Kings in Chinese?: 26,180 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,283 distinct characters, across 719 verses and 25 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read 2 Kings?: 56.8% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 69.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 25.3% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does 2 Kings take to read in Chinese?: About 101 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is 2 Kings a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 49 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).