The longest and shortest books of the Bible, ranked

The short answer

The shortest book of the Bible is 3 John, with one chapter, 14 verses and 294 words in the King James Version (292 in the World English Bible). 2 John has fewer verses, 13, but four more words. The longest is Psalms, with 150 chapters, 2,461 verses and 43,716 words in the KJV, the most by every English measure, though in the original Hebrew Jeremiah has more words. In the 66-book Protestant Bible, five books are a single chapter long: Obadiah, Philemon, 2 John, 3 John and Jude.

In this guide

1. What is the shortest book of the Bible?
2. What is the longest book of the Bible?
3. Why the answer depends on what you count
4. Shortest and longest books in the Old and New Testaments
5. Longest and shortest books in Catholic, Orthodox and Ethiopian Bibles
6. The longest and shortest chapters and verses
7. Short books you can read in one sitting
8. Every book of the Bible ranked by length
9. Questions people ask
10. Sources

Ask for the shortest book of the Bible and you can be given two different answers, both correct. It depends on what you count (chapters, verses or words), which translation you count in, and, for the longest book, whether you count the English or the Hebrew it was written in. So we counted every book ourselves in two public-domain translations, the King James Version (KJV) and the World English Bible (WEB), and set our figures beside the original-language counts other lists quote.

• 292words in 3 John (WEB), the shortest book
• 13verses in 2 John, the fewest
• 150chapters in Psalms, the most
• 5one-chapter books in the Protestant Bible

What is the shortest book of the Bible?

The shortest book of the Bible is 3 John, the Third Letter of John, by any count of words: 294 in the KJV, 292 in the WEB and 219 in the Greek. It is one chapter of 14 verses, a short letter from “the elder” to a man named Gaius, and it takes about a minute to read.

2 John, the letter just before it, is the shortest by verses. It has 13 to 3 John’s 14, but its verses run longer, and it comes out four words ahead in both English translations. The two are probably so close in length because each was written to fit a single sheet of papyrus.

The Greek and Hebrew counts are Overview Bible’s, made from the NA27 Greek New Testament and the Lexham Hebrew Bible, so they count the original text rather than a translation. These five are the only one-chapter books in the Protestant Bible. English and the original languages agree on the first three and disagree on the last two: in English Jude is shorter than Obadiah, while in Greek and Hebrew Obadiah has fewer words. Guinness World Records also names 3 John as the shortest book, with 294 words in 14 verses, which is our King James count exactly.

Does 3 John have 14 verses or 15?

Both, depending on your Bible. The KJV and the WEB number 14 verses. The SBL Greek New Testament, a modern critical edition, numbers 15, and so do modern translations such as the ESV and the NIV, which give the closing greeting (“Peace be to you” in the WEB) a verse of its own. The words are the same either way, and 2 John’s 13 verses are still the fewest.

What is the longest book of the Bible?

The longest book of the Bible is the Book of Psalms by every English measure: 150 chapters, 2,461 verses and 43,716 words in the KJV (41,314 in the WEB). Jeremiah is close behind on words, about 1,000 fewer in the KJV and 869 fewer in the WEB. Guinness World Records also gives Psalms as the longest book in the Authorised (King James) Version.

Counted in the languages the books were written in, the order changes. In Hebrew, Jeremiah is the longest book at 33,002 words, Genesis is second at 32,046, and Psalms is third at 30,147.

English takes more words than Hebrew in every one of these books, but not by the same amount. By our count the KJV uses about 1.45 English words for every Hebrew word in the Psalms, against 1.29 in Jeremiah and 1.19 in Genesis. Between books this close in length, that is enough to reorder them.

One more wrinkle: in the Hebrew Bible, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are each one book, split in two by the later Greek and Latin Bibles. Counted that way, Kings would be the longest of all at 39,145 Hebrew words, with Chronicles and Samuel close behind.

By English words, the ten longest books are Psalms, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Genesis, Isaiah, Numbers, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Luke and 2 Chronicles (in the KJV the last two swap places). Luke is the only New Testament book among them.

Why the answer depends on what you count

Chapters, verses and words give different answers because they measure different things, and only words measure how long a book takes to read. Here are the longest and shortest books by each measure, across the 66 books:

• Chapters came late. The books were written without chapters or verses. Stephen Langton drew up the chapters still used today around 1205, and the New Testament’s verse numbers first appeared in print in 1551. A chapter can be anything from two verses to 176, which is why Job, with 42 chapters (the sixth most), is only the 21st or 22nd longest book by words, depending on the translation.
• Verses are finer, but numbering differs. Editions split and join verses differently, as 3 John’s 14 or 15 shows.
• Words track reading time best, but depend on who counts. They change with the translation and with how a counter treats hyphens, possessives and the Psalms’ titles. For us a word is a run of letters or digits, with an apostrophe or hyphen inside it kept as one word, and the Psalms’ titles count. That way the KJV has 790,676 words; the figure most often quoted is 783,137. Our guide to how many words are in the Bible has the totals.

Shortest and longest books in the Old and New Testaments

In the Old Testament the shortest book is Obadiah and the longest is Psalms; in the New Testament the shortest is 3 John and the longest is Luke. Here are those and a few of the groups people ask about (words are KJV):

Two of these need a word more.

Luke, Matthew and Acts. Matthew and Acts have 28 chapters each to Luke’s 24, but Luke has the most verses and the most words, in English and in Greek, where it runs to 19,482 words against 18,450 for Acts and 18,346 for Matthew.

Romans and 1 Corinthians. Both have 16 chapters. In the KJV, 1 Corinthians has four more verses (437 to 433) and 40 more words, while the WEB gives Romans 81 more words. In Greek, Romans is clearly the longer, at 7,111 words to 6,830. Our guide to how many books Paul wrote goes through the thirteen letters that carry his name.

Longest and shortest books in Catholic, Orthodox and Ethiopian Bibles

Psalms has the most chapters in all five canons, and 3 John is the shortest book by words wherever the books can be counted, but the books in between shift. The books Catholics and Orthodox Christians call deuterocanonical, and Protestants often call the Apocrypha, include some long ones.

• The Catholic Bible (73 books). Sirach, at 51 chapters, is the fourth longest book by chapters, a chapter ahead of Genesis, and ninth by words. Esther and Daniel are longer too, at 16 and 14 chapters with their Greek additions. The shortest of the seven deuterocanonical books is Baruch, at 6 chapters.
• Bibles with the Apocrypha, and the Orthodox Bible. The Prayer of Manasseh makes a sixth one-chapter book, of 15 verses and 417 words in the WEB, which puts it between 2 John and Philemon, and makes it shorter than Obadiah. Orthodox Bibles also carry Psalm 151, so their Psalms has 151 chapters.
• The Ethiopian Bible (80 books in our count of the Tewahedo canon). Enoch, at 108 chapters, is second only to Psalms (151), and Jubilees ties Genesis at 50. Neither of our two translations includes them, so they are ranked by chapters only.

Our guides to the deuterocanonical books and the Ethiopian Bible go through these books one by one.

The longest and shortest chapters and verses

The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119 and the shortest is Psalm 117, two psalms apart.

• Psalm 119 has 176 verses in 22 stanzas of eight, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and in Hebrew every verse of a stanza begins with its letter. At 2,423 words in the KJV by our count, it is longer than 21 whole books of the Bible.
• Psalm 117 has two verses and 33 words in the KJV. It is chapter 595 of the Protestant Bible’s 1,189, the exact middle, with 594 chapters on each side. In the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate it is numbered Psalm 116.

The shortest and longest verse

The best-known shortest verse is John 11:35, two words in the KJV and the WEB alike:

Jesus wept.

John 11:35, World English Bible

By letters it is the shortest verse of the 66 books in both our translations, though not the only two-word one: 1 Thessalonians 5:16 (“Always rejoice” in the WEB) is two words as well, and in the WEB so is Job 3:2 (“Job answered”). In the Greek New Testament the shortest verse is Luke 20:30, at twelve letters in the Westcott and Hort text.

The longest verse, by our count of both translations, is Esther 8:9, at 90 words in the KJV and 86 in the WEB: the king’s scribes writing out Mordecai’s orders for 127 provinces “from India to Ethiopia”.

Short books you can read in one sitting

Twenty-one of the Protestant Bible’s 66 books take less than ten minutes each to read silently at the average adult pace of 238 words a minute, and 43 take an hour or less. Here are the twenty shortest; read back to back, they come to about an hour and three quarters.

A few more fit into a quarter of an hour: 1 Timothy, Ruth, 1 Peter and 1 John take about 10 minutes each, and the Song of Songs, Micah, Galatians, Ephesians and Lamentations between 11 and 14. Romans takes about 40 minutes, Revelation under 50 and Mark about an hour. Our guide to how long it takes to read the Bible times every book, and if you are looking for a first book to read whole, where to start reading the Bible suggests a few.

Every book of the Bible ranked by length

Here are all 66 books of the Protestant Bible ranked from longest to shortest by words in the WEB, with their chapters, verses and silent reading time.

Ranked by chapters instead, the six longest are Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Genesis, Ezekiel and Job, and by verses Psalms, Genesis, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Numbers and Ezekiel. The list runs from 41,314 words down to 292: just under three hours for the Psalms, and about a minute for 3 John.

Questions people ask

Is 2 John or 3 John the shortest book of the Bible?

By words, 3 John, with 294 words in the King James Version against 2 John's 298, and about 219 against 245 in the Greek. By verses, 2 John, with 13 to 3 John's 14. Modern translations such as the ESV and NIV give 3 John's closing greeting a verse of its own and number 15, which still leaves 2 John with the fewest verses.

What is the shortest book in the Old Testament?

In Protestant and Catholic Bibles it is Obadiah, the only Old Testament book with a single chapter. It has 21 verses, 669 words in the King James Version, 615 in the World English Bible and about 440 in Hebrew, around three minutes of reading. Haggai, with two chapters and 38 verses, comes next. Bibles that include the Prayer of Manasseh have a shorter one-chapter book still, of 15 verses.

What is the second longest book of the Bible?

It depends on what you count. By chapters it is Isaiah, with 66. By verses it is Genesis, with 1,533. By English words it is Jeremiah, about 1,000 words behind Psalms in the King James Version. Counted in Hebrew, with the books divided as English Bibles divide them, Jeremiah is the longest book of all, with Genesis second and Psalms third.

What is the longest book in the New Testament?

Luke, by verses and by words, with 1,151 verses and 25,939 words in the King James Version, and it is the longest in the Greek as well. Matthew and Acts have more chapters, 28 each to Luke's 24, so a count by chapters makes those two the longest. Acts is second by words.

Which books of the Bible have only one chapter?

Five in the 66-book Protestant Bible, Obadiah, Philemon, 2 John, 3 John and Jude, each of which takes three minutes or less to read. Bibles that include the Prayer of Manasseh, such as editions with the Apocrypha and the Orthodox and Ethiopian canons, have a sixth one-chapter book, of 15 verses.

What is the shortest chapter in the Bible?

Psalm 117, with two verses and 33 words in the King James Version. It is also the middle chapter of the Protestant Bible, number 595 of 1,189, with 594 on either side. The longest chapter is two psalms later, Psalm 119, with 176 verses. In the Greek and Latin numbering of the Psalms, Psalm 117 is Psalm 116.

Sources

1. Overview Bible, The shortest books of the Bible (original-language word counts, via Logos)
2. Overview Bible, The longest book of the Bible (original-language word counts, via Logos)
3. Guinness World Records, Longest book in the Bible
4. Wikipedia, Third Epistle of John
5. 3 John 1 in the ESV and NIV, Bible Gateway
6. Wikipedia, Books of Kings
7. Wikipedia, Books of Chronicles
8. Wikipedia, Chapters and verses of the Bible
9. Wikipedia, Psalm 119
10. Wikipedia, Psalm 117
11. Wikipedia, Jesus wept
12. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
13. World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
14. King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org