The 10 Shortest Verses in the Bible

How We Count: A Note on Methodology

Counting the shortest Bible verses depends on which translation you use — and the results differ significantly. The KJV, NIV, and ESV all count words differently due to translation choices and the handling of Greek and Hebrew particles.

• KJV shortest: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) — 2 words. “Rejoice evermore.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16) — 2 words.
• NIV shortest: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) still qualifies, but 1 Thessalonians 5:16 reads “Rejoice always” (2 words). The NIV also renders some other short verses differently.
• ESV shortest: Same two top candidates, with minor variation in other short verses throughout.

This study uses the King James Version throughout, which is the traditional standard for this kind of word-count comparison. We count the English words as printed — not the underlying Greek or Hebrew word count, which differs.

The Remarkable Cluster: 1 Thessalonians 5

Something unusual happens at the close of 1 Thessalonians. In verses 16–22, Paul writes a rapid-fire sequence of commands, each one a single sentence and several of them among the shortest in the New Testament. In order:

• “Rejoice evermore.” (v.16, 2 words)
• “Pray without ceasing.” (v.17, 3 words)
• “In every thing give thanks.” (v.18, 5 words)
• “Quench not the Spirit.” (v.19, 4 words)
• “Despise not prophesyings.” (v.20, 3 words)
• “Prove all things.” (v.21, 3 words)
• “Hold fast that which is good.” (v.21b, 6 words)
• “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” (v.22, 6 words)

Six of these eight commands contain five words or fewer. Paul is not being lazy — he is writing imperatives designed to be memorized and carried, like a pocketful of stones. The shortness is the point. Commands this short cannot be forgotten.

How Translations Affect the Rankings

The question “what is the shortest verse in the Bible?” has a different answer depending on translation. Here is why:

Greek word economy. Greek packs more meaning into fewer words than English. A Greek verb includes its subject — the single word edakrýsen means “he wept.” John 11:35 in Greek is a single word. The KJV translators rendered it as two words — “Jesus wept” — adding the explicit subject that Greek encodes in the verb ending. Some translations have added more words for clarity.

Hebrew name-lists. Genealogical sequences in Chronicles and Genesis sometimes produce very short verses in English — just names strung together without a predicate. Whether these count as “short verses” in a meaningful sense is debatable; they are short because they list, not because they compress.

The NIV and ESV. Modern translations regularly render Paul's short imperatives in 1 Thessalonians 5 with similar brevity. “Rejoice always” (NIV) and “Rejoice always” (ESV) for verse 16 both clock in at 2 words, matching the KJV. However, some other short KJV verses are expanded in modern translations for clarity, removing them from the top 10.

The Genealogical Verses: A Special Category

The Bible contains hundreds of genealogical verses — lines like “Eber, Peleg, Reu” (1 Chronicles 1:25) that are simply lists of names. In the KJV, such verses can be as short as two or three words. They rank among the shortest by strict word count, but they occupy a different literary function than propositional or narrative verses.

Genealogies in the ancient world were not filler. They were legal documents, identity claims, and theological arguments — tracing the line from Abraham to David to Jesus was not incidental to the Gospel writers. Matthew opens his entire Gospel with a genealogy (Matthew 1:1–17). A three-word verse like “Eber, Peleg, Reu” is preserving a chain of human beings across centuries of time — each name a person who lived, suffered, loved, and died between the lines.

What This Teaches Us: The Theology of Brevity

“Jesus wept.” Two words. The tomb. The crowd. The grief of people who love someone and have lost him. The Son of God standing among them not yet raising the dead but first doing something more immediately human: crying.

The shortest verses in the Bible are not theologically shallow. They are theologically compressed — like diamonds. “Rejoice evermore” contains an entire philosophy of joy. “Pray without ceasing” describes a posture that takes a lifetime to develop. “Prove all things” is a complete epistemological instruction in three words.

Scripture does not equate length with significance. Some of the most consequential statements in the Bible are also the shortest. The injunction to “love one another” (John 13:34) is five words. The summary of the gospel — “God so loved the world” (John 3:16) — begins with four.

Brevity in Scripture is a kind of trust. The writer trusts the words to carry weight without additional explanation. The reader is trusted to feel the full mass of what two words contain. “Jesus wept.” Nothing else needed to be said.

Citing This Study