A traveler with a staff stands on a rocky rise beneath the Milky Way, above a camp of tents, sheep and a fire.

Weak Things · Old Testament and Pearl of Great Price data · Creation to Malachi

The oldest books, counted.

Thirty-nine books from the Creation to Malachi, and five more in the Pearl of Great Price that open the same story wider. Here they are measured: the long lives of Genesis, the census in the wilderness, every king of Judah and Israel, Abraham’s road, and the verses the Church still turns to most.

Meet all 39 kings →Search every verse

39books, Genesis to Malachi

929chapters

23,145verses

609,247words, about 3.4 times the New Testament

6,570times the name LORD appears in small capitals

5books in the Pearl of Great Price, 635 verses

Counts are our own, from the King James text of the Old Testament and the current English Pearl of Great Price. Words are counted where spaces separate them. Sources are listed in How we counted.

Chapter 1 · 39 books

The shape of the Old Testament

Five groups, from the Law of Moses to the twelve minor prophets. Psalms has the most chapters and, by just 28 words, the most words, a hair ahead of Jeremiah. Switch the measure and the order changes.

150chapters in Psalms, the most of any book in scripture.

176verses in Psalm 119, the longest chapter. Psalm 117, two chapters earlier, is the shortest, at 2.

51 hoursto read the whole Old Testament aloud at 200 words a minute.

51%of the words in all four books of scripture, by our count. See How we counted.

Chapter 2 · Genesis 5 and 11

The long lives of the patriarchs

Genesis gives the age of each father when his son was born, and how long he lived. Line them up, counting from Adam, and the generations overlap in surprising ways. Noah’s life ends after Abraham’s begins.

969years for Methuselah, the longest life recorded. By these numbers he died in the year of the flood.

126years between Adam’s death and Noah’s birth, by the same count. Lamech, Noah’s father, was alive while Adam was.

58years old, Abraham, when Noah died, if you add up the ages in Genesis 11 as written.

365years for Enoch, who “walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” Genesis 5:24.

We count from Adam (year 0) using the ages in the King James text, with Abraham born when Terah was 70 (Genesis 11:26). Chronologies differ, and the Hebrew, Greek and Samaritan texts give different numbers. This is a way to see the text, not a date for the earth.

Chapter 3 · 603,550 and 601,730

Counting Israel in the wilderness

The book of Numbers is named for two censuses of the men of Israel “from twenty years old and upward.” One was taken at Sinai, one forty years later on the plains of Moab. The total barely moved. The tribes did.

603,550men counted at Sinai, Numbers 1:46.

601,730counted again near Jericho, Numbers 26:51. A change of 1,820.

−63%for Simeon, the largest drop, from 59,300 to 22,200.

+64%for Manasseh, the largest gain, from 32,200 to 52,700.

The Levites were counted separately, by a different rule: 22,000 males from a month old (Numbers 3:39), and 23,000 in the second census (Numbers 26:62).

Chapter 4 · 20 rulers and 19 kings

Every king of Judah and Israel

After Solomon, the kingdom split in two. The books of Kings give each ruler a reign and a verdict: he “did that which was right in the sight of the LORD,” or he did evil. Bars show years on the throne, in order, colored by that verdict.

Judah, the southern kingdom

Israel, the northern kingdom

8 of 20rulers of Judah are said to have done what was right. Not one of Israel’s 19 kings is.

55years for Manasseh of Judah, the longest reign, and among the worst.

7 daysfor Zimri of Israel, the shortest, 1 Kings 16:15.

8years old, Josiah, when he became king. He reigned 31 years and found the book of the law in the temple.

Chapter 5 · About 1,600 miles

Abraham’s road

Genesis and the book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price tell the same journey: from Ur to Haran, into Canaan, down to Egypt and back. Follow the route in order, then tap a stop for the verse.

~1,600miles in straight lines between the stops, before counting any wandering in between.

175years Abraham lived, Genesis 25:7.

3facsimiles from the papyri are printed with the book of Abraham.

“I sought for the blessings of the fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same.”Abraham 1:2

Chapter 6 · Names in the text

The people named most

David is named more than a thousand times, more than anyone else in the Old Testament. The women of the Old Testament are named less often, but their stories turn the history: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Ruth, Hannah and Esther.

Men named most

Women named most

Counts are whole-word matches in the King James text. Abraham includes Abram, and Sarah includes Sarai. Some names belong to more than one person: there are several Josephs and Zechariahs. Tribe names such as Judah and Benjamin are left out.

Chapter 7 · 609,247 words

The words of the old covenant

“Covenant” appears hundreds of times; “faith,” only twice. Some words central to Christian vocabulary are nearly absent, while “king” and “house” fill page after page. Tap a word, then search any word in the Old Testament and the Pearl of Great Price.

Search every verse

2verses use the word “faith”: Deuteronomy 32:20 and Habakkuk 2:4.

0times God or the LORD is named in the book of Esther. God is everywhere in the story and nowhere in the words.

2verses name the Messiah, both in Daniel 9.

Chapter 8 · About 430 verses

Isaiah in the Book of Mormon

Nephi said, “my soul delighteth in his words.” The Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah more than any other prophet. Each column is one of Isaiah’s 66 chapters; gold columns are the 21 chapters quoted in full or nearly in full.

19of Isaiah’s 66 chapters are quoted in their entirety, and two more except for two verses.

~430of Isaiah’s 1,292 verses appear in the Book of Mormon, some more than once, for nearly 600 in all.

377conference talks since 2000 cite Isaiah, more than any other Old Testament book.

Chapter 9 · 5 books · 635 verses

The Pearl of Great Price

Elder Franklin D. Richards gathered it in Liverpool in 1851 to put a few hard-to-find writings of Joseph Smith in the Saints’ hands. On October 10, 1880, it became scripture. It is small, and it is quoted out of all proportion to its size.

How it took shape

132conference talks since 2000 cite Moses 1:39, more than any other verse of scripture.

2.2%of the words in the standard works, by our count.

13Articles of Faith, written for the Wentworth letter and published March 1, 1842.

Chapter 10 · April 2000 to October 2026

What the Church quotes most

At General Conference, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart” leads the Old Testament, and Isaiah 53 is the chapter cited most. In the Pearl of Great Price, one verse stands above everything: “This is my work and my glory.”

Old Testament verses cited in the most talks

Pearl of Great Price verses cited in the most talks

Old Testament chapters cited in the most talks

Share of conference scripture citations, by year

Chapter 11 · All 39 books

Find any book

Search the books of the Old Testament and the Pearl of Great Price by name or group, and open any one on the Church’s site.

How we counted

Sources and notes

Books, verses and words. We counted the King James text of the Old Testament and the current English Pearl of Great Price, as published by the Church and shared in the open scriptures-json dataset. Words are counted where spaces separate them. Shares of all scripture compare against our counts for the New Testament (180,382), the Doctrine and Covenants (111,930) and the Book of Mormon (266,938), counted the same way.
Lifespans. Ages are read directly from Genesis 5 and Genesis 11, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph from later chapters. Joseph’s birth is placed when Jacob was 91, from Genesis 41:46, 45:6 and 47:9.
Census. Tribe totals are from Numbers 1 and Numbers 26; both sums match the totals the text gives.
Kings. Reign lengths and verdicts are from 1 and 2 Kings, cited on each bar. Some reigns overlapped as co-regencies, so the years do not add up to a simple timeline.
Abraham’s road. Stops follow Abraham 2 and Genesis 11 to 25. Ur and Haran are placed at their traditional sites; scholars debate the location of Ur. Mileage is straight-line between stops.
Isaiah. The 19 full chapters, the ~430 verses and the total of nearly 600 are from the Church’s Old Testament Seminary Teacher Manual. The chapters highlighted (2–14, 29 and 48–54) follow the Ensign, September 1998.
Pearl of Great Price. History is from the Introduction to the Pearl of Great Price.
General Conference. Talk counts are from the Weak Things conference index, April 2000 to October 2026, the same index behind Conference by the Numbers. A verse counts once per talk.
What the numbers can't say. A count shows size, pace and reach. It cannot measure faith, service or a changed heart. For those, read, serve and see.

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