Published 2026-11-01 · 5 min read
How many times is fasting mentioned in the Bible?
Fasting is mentioned 78 times in 65 verses of the King James Bible: “fast” 41, “fasting” 17, “fasted” 15, “fastings” 4 and “fastest” 1. That leaves out 44 uses of “fast” that mean firm, as in “hold fast”.
Download the per-verse CSV to check every match yourself. The method file (JSON) lists the rule, the source hash and every result.
How we counted
Rule: whole word, any case, in the verse text of our King James Version file. A letter, digit, underscore or hyphen next to the match disqualifies it, so a form never matches inside a longer word; possessives such as “’s” stay in. An occurrence is one match; a verse counts once however many matches it holds. This is the same rule as our Bible word counter.
| Form | Occurrences | Verses | In the headline |
|---|---|---|---|
| fast | 41 | 30 | yes |
| fastest | 1 | 1 | yes |
| fasted | 15 | 15 | yes |
| fasting | 17 | 17 | yes |
| fastings | 4 | 4 | yes |
| Headline total | 78 | 65 |
Verse totals cannot be added across rows: one verse can contain more than one form.
Why “hold fast” is not counted
“Fast” has two meanings in the KJV. It appears 85 times; 41 mean going without food (“proclaim a fast”, “when ye fast”), and 44 mean firm or fixed: “hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21), “stand fast in the faith” (1 Corinthians 16:13), “fast asleep” (Jonah 1:5). We read every verse and list the 31 verses where “fast” or “fastest” means fasting in the script and the method file, so the split can be checked. “Fasted”, “fasting” and “fastings” are always about fasting; “fasts” does not occur.
Some fasts are described without the word. Moses “did neither eat bread, nor drink water” for forty days (Exodus 34:28); a word count cannot find those.
“Prayer and fasting” is a translation difference. The KJV has it in Matthew 17:21 and Mark 9:29; many modern translations leave out or footnote it, and omit “and fasting” in , following older manuscripts. Both verses are inside the 78.
Old Testament, New Testament and each book
| Testament | Occurrences | Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Old Testament | 46 | 38 |
| New Testament | 32 | 27 |
| Book (KJV) | Occurrences | Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Matthew | 10 | 8 |
| Mark | 8 | 5 |
| Isaiah | 7 | 4 |
| Zechariah | 6 | 2 |
| Acts | 6 | 6 |
| 2 Samuel | 5 | 5 |
| Luke | 5 | 5 |
| Esther | 4 | 3 |
| 1 Kings | 3 | 3 |
| Psalms | 3 | 3 |
Show the other 12 books with at least one match
| Book (KJV) | Occurrences | Verses |
|---|---|---|
| Jeremiah | 3 | 3 |
| Joel | 3 | 3 |
| 1 Samuel | 2 | 2 |
| Ezra | 2 | 2 |
| Nehemiah | 2 | 2 |
| Daniel | 2 | 2 |
| 2 Corinthians | 2 | 2 |
| Judges | 1 | 1 |
| 1 Chronicles | 1 | 1 |
| 2 Chronicles | 1 | 1 |
| Jonah | 1 | 1 |
| 1 Corinthians | 1 | 1 |
First: Judges 20:26. Last: 2 Corinthians 11:27. The most in one verse is 4, in Zechariah 8:19. 44 of the 66 books have no match.
Every verse
All 65 verses in Bible order; a number in brackets is a verse with more than one use. Each link opens the verse in the KJV reader.
Judges 20:26, 1 Samuel 7:6, 1 Samuel 31:13, 2 Samuel 1:12, 2 Samuel 12:16, 2 Samuel 12:21, 2 Samuel 12:22, 2 Samuel 12:23, 1 Kings 21:9, 1 Kings 21:12, 1 Kings 21:27, 1 Chronicles 10:12, 2 Chronicles 20:3, Ezra 8:21, Ezra 8:23, Nehemiah 1:4, Nehemiah 9:1, Esther 4:3, Esther 4:16 (2), Esther 9:31, Psalms 35:13, Psalms 69:10, Psalms 109:24, Isaiah 58:3 (2), Isaiah 58:4 (2), Isaiah 58:5 (2), Isaiah 58:6, Jeremiah 14:12, Jeremiah 36:6, Jeremiah 36:9, Daniel 6:18, Daniel 9:3, Joel 1:14, Joel 2:12, Joel 2:15, Jonah 3:5, Zechariah 7:5 (2), Zechariah 8:19 (4), Matthew 4:2, Matthew 6:16 (2), Matthew 6:17, Matthew 6:18, Matthew 9:14 (2), Matthew 9:15, Matthew 15:32, Matthew 17:21, Mark 2:18 (3), Mark 2:19 (2), Mark 2:20, Mark 8:3, Mark 9:29, Luke 2:37, Luke 5:33, Luke 5:34, Luke 5:35, Luke 18:12, Acts 10:30, Acts 13:2, Acts 13:3, Acts 14:23, Acts 27:9, Acts 27:33, 1 Corinthians 7:5, 2 Corinthians 6:5, 2 Corinthians 11:27
Check the count yourself
Open fasting-count-audit.csv in a spreadsheet: 109 rows plus a header, one for every verse containing a counted form, including the “hold fast” verses with 0 in the headline column. The headline_occurrences column sums to 78 (=SUM over it) and has 65 non-zero rows (=COUNTIF(range,">0")). The context_url column opens each verse.
Or recount from scratch. Download count-words.py and run it with Python 3:
python count-words.py --output-dir results
It uses only Python’s standard library, downloads the pinned KJV file, checks its SHA-256 (0c3b8afefa4efaa8bd72576682c8ad060e4ccb499e81943a9678de49ab9416ad) and writes every CSV and the method JSON. The KJV text was imported from aruljohn/Bible-kjv; its exact printing is unknown. Only verse text is counted: no headings, notes or Apocrypha.
To count another word with the same rule, use the Bible word counter.
Read next
Other word counts: forgiveness, heart, Enoch, 666, Jesus, God and love.