The shortest verse in the Bible

The verse in context

John 11:35 sits within the narrative of the death and raising of Lazarus (John 11:1–44). Jesus arrives at Bethany after Lazarus has been buried for four days, encounters Lazarus’s sisters Mary and Martha, and is led to the tomb. Verse 35 records his response just before the tomb is opened.

The full surrounding passage (John 11:33–37, BSB):

33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you put him?” He asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they answered. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!” 37 But some of them asked, “Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have kept Lazarus from dying?”

Why “shortest verse” depends on the translation

The verse-numbering system used in modern Bibles was added long after the original texts. In Hebrew Bibles, the Masoretic system of verse division was finalised in the medieval period; in the New Testament, the modern verse divisions were introduced by Robert Estienne (Stephanus) in his 1551 Greek New Testament and 1553 French Bible.

This means “the shortest verse” depends on:

1. Which translation you are reading
2. Whether you measure by words or by letters
3. Whether you count Old Testament or New Testament

In standard English translations, John 11:35 — “Jesus wept.” — is the shortest verse at two words and ten characters (including the period).

The shortest in Greek

In the original Greek of the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians 5:16 is shorter:

Πάντοτε χαίρετε.

That is two words (“Rejoice always”) rendered in English as a three-word imperative. In Greek letters it is shorter than the Greek of John 11:35 (ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς).

A note on the Old Testament

In some printed Bibles, 1 Chronicles 1:25 — a single line of three names within a long genealogy — is shorter than John 11:35 by character count in some translations. The names Eber, Peleg, Reu fill the entire verse. This is a quirk of how genealogies are versified rather than a deliberate “short verse,” but it appears in some lists of shortest verses.