Occasionally, people ask how many times words appear in the Bible. Below is a table showing some common words as they appear in four different Bible translations. The reason for the differences in counts has to do with the variations in which certain words can be translated into another language. For example, in Spanish to say “I’m hungry” would be “yo tengo hambre.” Literally, it is “I have hunger.” We translate that into English as “I am hungry,” or “I’m hungry.” Either one is correct. But if we were to do a word count on the word “am” we would find that one translation (I am hungry) would have more occurrences than another (I’m hungry). It is primarily this kind of translation issue that results in differences in the word number counts.
WORD | ESV | KJV | NASB | NIV |
Apostle | 78 | 79 | 77 | 85 |
Baptize, Baptized, Baptism, Baptizing | 73 | 74 | 71 | 71 |
Christ | 535 | 573 | 534 | 543 |
Condemn, Condemned, Condemnation | 70 | 59 | 63 | 79 |
Crucify, Crucified | 53 | 53 | 52 | 52 |
Damn, Damnation, Damned | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
Deacon, Deacons | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
Death | 443 | 376 | 466 | 454 |
Demon, Demons | 80 | 0 | 80 | 82 |
Devil, Devils | 34 | 116 | 34 | 36 |
Disciple, Disciples | 269 | 273 | 272 | 296 |
Elder, Elders, eldership | 201 | 199 | 206 | 195 |
Forgive, Forgiven, Forgiveness, Forgiving | 134 | 119 | 141 | 150 |
God | 4691 | 4717 | 4646 | 4691 |
Heaven, Heavens | 734 | 739 | 671 | 632 |
Hell | 14 | 54 | 13 | 14 |
Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost | 93 | HS/7, HG/90 | 93 | 94 |
Jesus | 966 | 984 | 987 | 1275 |
Judge, judges, judging, judgment, judgments | 467 | 733 | 519 | 393 |
Law, Laws, Lawful | 464 | 506 | 462 | 593 |
Lucifer | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Moses | 852 | 848 | 852 | 847 |
Redeem, Redeemable, Redeemed, Redeemer, Redeeming | 141 | 139 | 122 | 128 |
Repent, Repentance | 69 | 106 | 73 | 74 |
Righteous, Righteousness | 567 | 555 | 619 | 545 |
Salvation | 173 | 164 | 160 | 122 |
Sanctify, Sanctified, Sanctification | 40 | 141 | 65 | 16 |
Satan | 54 | 56 | 54 | 54 |
Sin, sins, sinning, sinned | 763 | 749 | 751 | 930 |
Tabernacle | 108 | 358 | 131 | 124 |