Shortest Verse in the Bible: John 11:35 and the 10 Shortest Verses

In most English Bibles the shortest verse is John 11:35:

Jesus wept. (John 11:35, BSB)

It has two words in the King James Version and in many modern translations.

The context

The verse comes after the death of Lazarus, when Jesus arrives at Bethany and meets Lazarus’s sisters and friends:

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you put him?” He asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they answered. (John 11:33–34, BSB)

What “Jesus wept” says in Greek

In the Greek New Testament, John 11:35 is three words: edakrysen ho Iēsous (ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς). The verb dakryō means to shed tears, and this is the only place it appears in the New Testament.

Two verses earlier, John uses a different verb, klaiō, for Mary and the mourners who were weeping (John 11:33). Klaiō often describes loud weeping or wailing, while dakryō describes tears. Most English translations use “weep” for both, so the difference is easy to miss in English.

Why did Jesus weep?

Jesus already knew that Lazarus had died and told his disciples he was going to wake him (John 11:11–15). A few verses after John 11:35, he raises Lazarus from the tomb (John 11:43–44). He wept anyway. Some of the people standing nearby said, “See how He loved him!” (John 11:36, BSB). Others asked why the man who opened the eyes of the blind could not have kept Lazarus from dying (John 11:37).

Readers have given several reasons for his tears: grief for a friend, compassion for Mary and Martha, and sorrow at death itself. The passage does not say which, and it may be all of them. The Gospels record Jesus weeping in one other scene, over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and Hebrews 5:7 mentions his prayers “with loud cries and tears.”

The second shortest verse in the Bible

In the King James Version, the second shortest verse is 1 Thessalonians 5:16, “Rejoice evermore.” It also has two words, but more letters than “Jesus wept.” The next one, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, is “Pray without ceasing.”

In modern translations the order changes. The Berean Standard Bible renders 1 Thessalonians 5:16 as “Rejoice at all times,” which is four words, so the second shortest becomes Luke 17:32, “Remember Lot’s wife!” at three.

The 10 shortest verses in the Bible

Counted by words in the Berean Standard Bible, leaving out verses that are only part of a list of names or numbers:

#	Verse	Text (BSB)	Words
1	John 11:35	Jesus wept.	2
2	Luke 17:32	Remember Lot’s wife!	3
3	1 Thessalonians 5:17	Pray without ceasing.	3
4	Exodus 20:15	You shall not steal.	4
5	Exodus 20:13	You shall not murder.	4
6	1 Thessalonians 5:16	Rejoice at all times.	4
7	1 Corinthians 16:14	Do everything in love.	4
8	Hebrews 13:1	Continue in brotherly love.	4
9	Mark 4:14	The farmer sows the word.	5
10	1 Thessalonians 5:19	Do not extinguish the Spirit.	5

Exodus 20:13 and 20:15 appear again word for word in Deuteronomy 5:17 and 5:19. Several of these make a good first verse to copy by hand, and 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 together is a short passage to memorize.

The shortest verse in the Old Testament

The verse usually given is 1 Chronicles 1:25, “Eber, Peleg, Reu,” three names in a genealogy. Some translations set out lists in Joshua and Numbers one line per verse, and a few of those are only two words, such as Joshua 21:15, “Holon, Debir,” in the Berean Standard Bible. As a complete sentence, the shortest Old Testament verses are two of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not steal” and “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13, 15).

Which verse counts as the shortest depends on the translation and on whether you count words or letters. John 11:35 is the answer most people mean.

John 11:35 in different translations

Translation	John 11:35
King James Version (KJV)	Jesus wept.
New International Version (NIV)	Jesus wept.
English Standard Version (ESV)	Jesus wept.
Berean Standard Bible (BSB)	Jesus wept.
New Living Translation (NLT)	Then Jesus wept.
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)	Jesus began to weep.
Chinese Union Version (和合本)	耶穌哭了。

In the original Greek, John 11:35 is not the shortest verse by letter count. That is usually given as 1 Thessalonians 5:16, Pantote chairete (Πάντοτε χαίρετε), “Rejoice always,” which has 14 Greek letters to the 16 of John 11:35.

Who added the verse numbers

The biblical authors did not write in numbered verses. The chapter divisions most Bibles use today go back to Stephen Langton in the early 1200s. Robert Estienne, a printer in Paris, published a Greek New Testament with numbered verses in 1551, and the Geneva Bible of 1560 was the first complete English Bible to number its verses. So “the shortest verse” is a fact about where those later divisions fall, and that is why the answer can change from one translation to another.

Longest and shortest chapters

	Chapter	Verses
Longest chapter	Psalm 119	176
Shortest chapter	Psalm 117	2

The shortest chapter in each Gospel

Gospel	Shortest chapter	Verses
Matthew	Matthew 3	17
Mark	Mark 16	20
Luke	Luke 16	31
John	John 2 and John 21	25 each

Many Bibles mark Mark 16:9–20 as missing from the earliest manuscripts. Without those verses, Mark 16 has 8.

Psalm 119 is an acrostic of 22 stanzas. See Psalm 119 reading plan.

Psalm 117 is also the middle chapter of the Bible. See the shortest chapter in the Bible for the full text and a free copywork page.

Longest and shortest books

• Longest: Psalms has the most chapters, 150. By word count, Psalms and Jeremiah are close, and counts differ slightly between translations.
• Shortest: 2 John has the fewest verses, 13. 3 John has 14 and is about as short. In the Berean Standard Bible, 2 John is 293 words and 3 John is 309. In the Greek text, 3 John is the shorter of the two.

More Bible records

Record	Answer
Shortest verse (most English Bibles)	John 11:35
Shortest verse (Greek, by letters)	1 Thessalonians 5:16
Longest verse	Esther 8:9 (about 90 words in the KJV)
Longest chapter	Psalm 119 (176 verses)
Shortest chapter	Psalm 117 (2 verses)
Book with the most chapters	Psalms (150)
New Testament books with the most chapters	Matthew and Acts (28 each)
Longest New Testament book by word count	Luke
Oldest person	Methuselah, 969 years (Genesis 5:27)

Word counts differ slightly between translations and editions of the original text, so records based on length are approximate.

Write it by hand

Two words take a few seconds to write, so John 11:35 is an easy first verse if you are new to scripture writing. Penned Grace lets you write it on iPhone, iPad or Android, one word at a time.