How many characters are in Nehemiah in Chinese?

12,713 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,039 distinct characters, across 405 verses and 13 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Nehemiah?

56.4% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 66.4% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 28% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Nehemiah take to read in Chinese?

About 49 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Nehemiah a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 51 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Nehemiah in Chinese: 1,039 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Nehemiah in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON

Nehemiah tells of the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls and the renewal of the community, written largely in the first person.

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

Nehemiah in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	13
Verses	405
Chinese characters	12,713
Distinct characters	1,039
Word tokens	8,608
Distinct words	1,571
Average verse	31 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	56.4%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	66.4%
Not in HSK 1-9	28%
Difficulty rank	51 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	49 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Nehemiah uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	人	149
2	儿子	109
3	子孙	91
4	有	61
5	神	60
6	说	59
7	名	54
8	王	49
9	百	47
10	修造	47
11	祭司	46
12	利未	45
13	一	45
14	犹大	43
15	哈	42
16	尼	42
17	耶路撒冷	38
18	使	33
19	巴	33
20	来	32

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

Words that occur in Nehemiah and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
近顿布尼押杜亚亚奈雅亚难长官八布迦亚木约雅金厂水门哈米亚楼参巴拉祖坟哈沙尼一手俸禄

17 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Nehemiah

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Nehemiah 6	64.6%	19	657
Nehemiah 4	62%	23	723
Nehemiah 2	61.2%	20	737
Nehemiah 13	60%	31	1,174
Nehemiah 9	59.7%	38	1,605
Nehemiah 3	58%	32	1,053
Nehemiah 5	57.7%	19	713
Nehemiah 1	56.6%	11	418

Read it

Nehemiah 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 Nehemiah in Chinese?: 12,713 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,039 distinct characters, across 405 verses and 13 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Nehemiah?: 56.4% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 66.4% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 28% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Nehemiah take to read in Chinese?: About 49 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Nehemiah a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 51 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).