How many times does the Bible mention the heart?

The count

The word “heart” (singular and plural) appears:

• KJV: approximately 830 occurrences.
• BSB: approximately 760 occurrences.
• NIV: approximately 590 occurrences (uses “mind” more often where the underlying Hebrew or Greek is “heart”).

The variance reflects translation choices about whether to translate lev / levav / kardia literally as “heart” or to render with what the underlying concept means in English (“mind,” “inner self,” “will”).

The Hebrew vocabulary

• lev (לֵב, “heart”): about 596 occurrences.
• levav (לֵבָב, “heart”): about 257 occurrences. Levav and lev are minor variants of the same word; translators do not generally distinguish them.

Combined: 853 occurrences in the OT.

The Greek vocabulary

• kardia (καρδία, “heart”): about 160 occurrences in the NT.

What “heart” meant

In biblical Hebrew and koinē Greek, the heart is the seat of:

• Thought. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1) — i.e., he thinks it.
• Intention and will. “The LORD will judge the secrets of the heart.” (Romans 2:16)
• Memory. “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)
• Moral character. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23)

This is different from modern English usage, where “heart” tends to mean the seat of feeling specifically. Biblical “heart” includes feeling but is broader — it is roughly the inner self, the locus of personality, decision, and moral orientation. When biblical writers want to describe feeling alone, they often use “bowels” (KJV) or “kidneys” — terms that modern translations render as “compassion” or “innermost being.”

A common misreading

Modern readers sometimes read the biblical “heart” as if it were the modern emotional heart — leading to misreadings of passages like “I will give you a new heart” (Ezekiel 36:26) as primarily about feelings, when the biblical sense is closer to “I will give you a new disposition, a new will, a new way of thinking and choosing.” Understanding the broader semantic range tends to enrich the reading.