Sunday

Reading Through the Bible - The 10 Shortest Books in the Bible





We are looking at the 10 Shortest books in the Bible.

You might be surprised at what they actually are.






There are 3 ways of deciding on the sizes of Bible books.

Number of Chapters.

Number of Verses.

Number of Words.

You can see a chart comparing these in my Reading Plan by Order of Size of Books


OR - if time is more important to you Number of minutes, hours & days



Here are the

 10 shortest books of the Bible by Number of Chapters


The First 5 each only contain 1 chapter.

None of the other 5 books are more than 3 chapters long.

  1. Second John (1 chapter)
  2. Third John (1 chapter)
  3. Jude (1 chapter)
  4. Obadiah (1 chapter)
  5. Philemon (1 chapter)
  6. Haggai (2 chapters)
  7. Habakkuk (3 chapters)
  8. Nahum (3 chapters)
  9. Titus (3 chapters)
  10. Zephaniah (3 chapters)

Note: In my Reading Plan I have combined   1,2 & 3 John,  1 & 2 Peter,  1 & 2 Timothy,  1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Corinthians and  as it seemed more logical to me to read these letters to the same churches consecutively as well as the 1st & 2nd books in the Old Testament because they logically & historically followed on from each other.



Here are the

 10 shortest books of the Bible by Number of Verses


The First 5 each only contain 1 chapter.

Only one of the other 5 books are more than 3 chapters long.

  1. Second John (13 verses)
  2. Third John (14 verses)
  3. Obadiah (21 verses)
  4. Philemon (25 verses)
  5. Jude (25 verses)
  6. Haggai (38 verses)   2
  7. Titus (46 verses    3
  8. Nahum (47 verses)   3
  9. Jonah (48 verses)    4
  10. Zephaniah (53 verses)   3





Here are the

 10 shortest books of the Bible by Number of Words


The First 5 are each only contain 1 chapter.

None of the other 5 books are more than 3 chapters long.

  1. Third John (219 words)
  2. Second John (245 words)
  3. Philemon (430 words)
  4. Jude (608 words)
  5. Obadiah (669 words)
  6. Titus (896 words)
  7. Haggai (1130 words)
  8. Nahum (1284 words)
  9. Jonah (1320 words)
  10. Habakkuk (1475 words)



If TIME is more important to you


Number of Minutes, Hours, Days can be considered.



Of course then it would have to be the number of words to calculate from because people have worked out how long it takes to read a certain number of words and hence from that how long it takes to read the various books of the Bible.






For Example in:

30 mins  you could read the book of Ecclesiastes.

1 hour & 30 mins  you could read the Gospel of Mark.

5 hours  you could read the Book of Psalms.

10 hours  you could read the 4 Gospels and the Book of Acts




This is all to do with reading the Bible.

If you would like to start in the whole bible then why not try my Plan



Studying and memorizing of course will take longer.

If you are interested in studying you may find these  Devotionals  
and  Bible Studies  helpful 

or 

if you are thinking of trying to memorize more of the Bible then try our page on Memorizing Scripture  to get help and advice (we even have videos of songs there).








OTHER POSTS ABOUT THE BIBLE & BOOKS OF THE BIBLE ARE ADDED REGULARLY AND AN UPDATED LIST CAN BE FOUND AT OUR