How many characters are in Judges in Chinese?

21,662 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,242 distinct characters, across 617 verses and 21 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Judges?

60.6% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 71.2% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 23.6% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Judges take to read in Chinese?

About 83 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Judges a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 29 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Judges in Chinese: 1,242 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Judges in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON

Judges covers the turbulent period between Joshua and the monarchy, when tribal leaders such as Deborah, Gideon and Samson rose in cycles of crisis and deliverance.

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

Judges in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	21
Verses	617
Chinese characters	21,662
Distinct characters	1,242
Word tokens	15,185
Distinct words	1,936
Average verse	35 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	60.6%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	71.2%
Not in HSK 1-9	23.6%
Difficulty rank	29 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	83 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Judges uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	人	392
2	说	283
3	耶和华	173
4	以色列人	127
5	去	112
6	有	83
7	一	79
8	地	77
9	参孙	70
10	神	68
11	来	65
12	基甸	63
13	行	61
14	住	60
15	以色列	60
16	要	58
17	拿	55
18	列	55
19	手	52
20	基	52

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

Words that occur in Judges and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
比赞款猜磐大利拉纬线醒来偏西波金点出便利笏庵亿鬓亚比以谢族普拉荆枳棘飘摇西布勒

22 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Judges

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Judges 19	71.5%	30	1,067
Judges 18	70.2%	31	1,104
Judges 14	67%	20	790
Judges 7	63.8%	25	1,014
Judges 17	63.4%	13	438
Judges 6	62.2%	40	1,463
Judges 21	62.1%	25	829
Judges 8	61.7%	35	1,223

Read it

Judges 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 Judges in Chinese?: 21,662 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,242 distinct characters, across 617 verses and 21 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Judges?: 60.6% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 71.2% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 23.6% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Judges take to read in Chinese?: About 83 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Judges a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 29 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).