Published 2026-10-27 · 9 min read

How many times is God mentioned in the Bible?

Published by Jeff Song, who runs TrustBible · Written with AI assistance

阅读中文版：和合本的神与英文 KJV 的 God

In the English KJV text counted here, standalone “god” appears 4,469 times in 3,890 verses, ignoring case and including possessives but excluding hyphen-joined forms. That is 4,112 God + 301 GOD + 56 god; adding standalone gods gives 4,713. LORD, the usual Old Testament rendering of YHWH, is a separate search: 6,654.

Download the per-verse CSV, or inspect the exact rules, source hashes and all results.

One word, several counting rules

An occurrence is one match; a matching verse counts once even when the word repeats. The headline uses the same standalone rule as our Jesus-name guide: (?<![\w-])god(?![\w-]) with Python re.IGNORECASE. A letter, digit, underscore or ASCII hyphen beside the match disqualifies it. Possessive apostrophes remain allowed. This counts words, not every reference to God, and does not decide whether a lowercase use names another god.

Do not add the possessive row again: its 26 occurrences are already included. Nor can verse counts be added across casing rows: one verse can contain more than one spelling. Godhead, godly and ungodly are substring candidates, not standalone matches.

The three God-ward verses are Exodus 18:19, 2 Corinthians 3:4, 1 Thessalonians 1:8. Including these hyphen-joined forms produces 4,472 occurrences in 3,892 verses. It adds three occurrences but only two matching verses because Exodus 18:19 already has a separate God. Capitalised God becomes 4,115/3,582, and God + GOD becomes 4,416/3,859 under that wider boundary rule.

Why God, GOD, LORD and Lord differ

In the Old Testament, God commonly translates Elohim, a word for God or gods. YHWH is the divine name. The KJV convention normally represents it as small-cap LORD, following the practice of reading the title Adonai (“Lord”) in place of the name. The plain-text file stores those small capitals as uppercase letters. See the American Bible Society's explanations of God's names and YHWH.

When Adonai precedes YHWH, Lord GOD represents Adonai YHWH, avoiding “Lord LORD”; LORD God represents YHWH Elohim. Compare Genesis 15:2 with Genesis 2:4. Ordinary God does not itself mean YHWH. These English counts are not Hebrew-name counts: capitalization also appears in New Testament quotations, and the search does not classify every use. Lord is a title whose referent depends on context.

Old Testament, New Testament and every book

The table below ranks books by the headline rule: case-insensitive standalone god, possessives included and hyphen-joined forms excluded, in this KJV text. The disclosure contains the rest of the same 66-book inventory.

Zero depends on the rule and translation. In this KJV, any-case standalone god has zero matches in Esther and Song of Solomon. Capitalised standalone God has zero in Esther, Song of Solomon and Obadiah: Obadiah 1:1 has Lord GOD. A missing word is not proof that a book has no reference to God.

Why you see 4,094, 4,118 or 4,473

The source text and the rule must both match before two totals can be compared. Bible Says About, checked on October 27, 2026, gives 4,446/3,877 for its exact word and 4,716/4,063 for every form. We reproduce both aggregates below: an independent cross-check, not proof that every verse or capitalization agrees. BSA also publishes its counting rule, per-book table and OT/NT split.

The 4,473 figure is attributed to Strong's on Q&A sites such as FunTrivia and Quora; that attribution does not identify a text or establish Strong's own result. Being one away from our wider count does not tell us the cause.

The tested rules include case-sensitive God, GOD and god; God + GOD; case-insensitive singular and singular-plus-plural; standalone versus hyphen-accepting word boundaries; retaining versus omitting apostrophe-followed possessives; case-sensitive God + Gods; and substring/prefix searches including Godhead, godly and ungodly. For example, capitalised God without possessives or hyphens gives 4,086; capitalised God or Gods with hyphens gives 4,117; the substring God gives 4,120. None establishes the quoted 4,094, 4,118, 4,008 or 4,370. Every tested regex, flag and result is in the method JSON; no unknown historical method is assigned to a source.

What about 神 in the Chinese Union Version?

The Simplified Chinese Union Version here is the 神版 (Shen edition). Its input contains 31,100 verse records, while KJV has 31,102. These are different translations and verse inventories, so the following is a separate character/string measurement, not a translation of the English word total.

The raw 神 count includes compounds such as 神迹, 精神, 鬼神, 假神, 别神, 诸神, 众神, 列神, 神像, 外邦神, 女神 and 神不守舍. It also includes 神人 (“man of God”). These are examples, not a complete semantic classification; subtracting a short list would not yield every reference to God. The method file records compound frequencies and the forty most frequent bigrams containing 神, without publishing a subtraction-derived “God” total.

Under the raw CUV 神 character rule, Esther and Obadiah have zero. Song of Solomon does contain 神 at 5:6 in the CUV, in 神不守舍, an expression that does not name God. Compare Obadiah 1:1 in CUV, which uses 主耶和华.

The 上帝版 (Shangti edition) uses 上帝 where 神版 uses 神 for God; it does not replace every 神 inside other words. The CUV editions described by the text provider explain why an edition label matters. The 11 raw 上帝 matches above belong to this 神版 input, not to a recount of 上帝版.

Check the CSV and repeat the count

Open god-count-audit.csv in a spreadsheet. It has 4,117 data rows plus a header: one row for every verse containing the substring god, including zero-match compounds. Column H is any_case_god; D, E and F are God_capitalised, GOD_small_caps and god_lowercase.

The context_url column opens each original verse. The possessives and hyphen_joined_god columns make boundary choices inspectable. LORD/Lord CSV columns cover only these god-candidate rows; their sums are not whole-Bible LORD/Lord totals. Use the method JSON for those full-corpus totals.

Download count-god.py, then run it with Python 3:

python count-god.py --output-dir results

It needs only Python's standard library. It downloads the pinned KJV and pinned CUV, verifies both SHA-256 hashes, and writes the CSV and method JSON. For fully offline use, download both inputs and run:

python count-god.py --input kjv.jsonl.gz --cuv-input cuv-simplified.jsonl.gz --output-dir results

KJV SHA-256: 0c3b8afefa4efaa8bd72576682c8ad060e4ccb499e81943a9678de49ab9416ad. CUV SHA-256: 63727b793d1fb2da5c62d59ec7e13349b8e47bf25361ea515ef1b740b8ea7a5c. The method JSON also hashes the script and CSV. The KJV was imported from aruljohn/Bible-kjv; its exact printing is Unknown. Only verse text is counted. Pronouns and titles such as Almighty are outside the stated word rules. These numbers do not measure every mention of God or every theological theme.

Read the words in context

Start in the KJV reader at Genesis 1:1. For other counting questions, read the Jesus-name guide, love count, or “fear not” guide.