If you search for how many promises are in the Bible, you will see one number again and again: 8,810. It is a real count made by a real person, and it has a source you can check. Most of the other numbers you will see do not.
This guide lays out what is known and what is only repeated. It also shows you why honest people who love the Bible can count the same book and end with different totals. And it gives you one number nobody has to argue about: how many times the word itself appears in the King James Version.
The man who counted 8,810 promises
His name was Everek Storms. He was a schoolteacher in Kitchener, Ontario, in Canada. On December 24, 1956, TIME magazine ran a short piece about him under the heading Religion: Promises.
According to that report, Storms counted the promises during his 27th time reading through the whole Bible. The counting took him about a year and a half. His final tally was 8,810. Of those, he put 7,487 in one group: promises from God to people. Simple subtraction leaves 1,323 of his total outside that group.
TIME also reported that his count corrected an older claim that the Bible held 30,000 promises. His own careful count came out far lower.
So when a sermon or a website says the Bible has 8,810 promises, this is where the number comes from. It is one man's careful count, using his own rules. It is not an official figure, and we know of no official count.
The other numbers you will hear
Here is how each figure stands when you try to trace it back to a source.
| Figure | Where it comes from | Can it be traced? |
|---|---|---|
| 30,000 | An older claim TIME said Storms corrected | Only as the claim he replaced |
| 8,810 | Everek Storms, all promises he counted | Yes, TIME, December 24, 1956 |
| 7,487 | Storms, promises from God to people | Yes, the same TIME report |
| 8,000 | Repeated online and in sermons | No published count found |
| 7,000 | Repeated online and in sermons | No published count found |
| 3,000 | Repeated online and in sermons | No published count found |
The 8,000 and 7,000 figures may simply be rounded versions of Storms's 8,810 and 7,487, but we could not find anyone who published a count with those totals, so we cannot say for sure. The 3,000 figure we could not trace at all. If you see one of these numbers in a book or online, look for who did the counting and how. If no one is named, treat it as a guess.
Why no two counts agree
The Bible does not number its promises. Anyone who counts has to make a few choices first, and each choice moves the total up or down.
- Who is speaking?Do you count only what God says, or also promises people make to each other, like Ruth to Naomi? Storms's 8,810 is his whole total, and 7,487 is the part he said came from God to people.
- Do repeats count?God spoke the promise of a great nation to Abraham, then repeated it to Isaac and to Jacob. One promise, or three?
- What about warnings?God also said what He would do if His people turned away. Some counters include those. Others count only good things promised.
- What is one promise?Isaiah 41:10 holds three I wills, plus God's word that He is with you. One counter sees one promise there; another sees four.
Two careful readers can make different choices and both be honest. The total depends on the rules. That is why the best question to ask about any number is not whether it is right, but how it was counted.
How the Every Promise of God books count
This series has its own rules, and they are simple to state. It goes through the Bible in order and numbers a promise each time God speaks one. If God says the same thing again later, to a new person or at a new moment, that gets its own number and its own page, because the second time often lands in a very different life.
Two kinds of sayings are left out. Promises between people are left out, since the books are about what God has said. Warnings of judgment are left out too.
Book One numbers Promises 1 through 295, from Genesis through Leviticus. Book Two picks up at 296 and runs through 620, from Numbers through Esther. Book Three, coming next, covers 621 through 904 in Job and Psalms 1 through 89. Because the rules differ from Storms's rules, the numbers in the books are not meant to line up with 8,810.
How many promises are in the New Testament?
People ask this often, and so do readers who want to know how many promises Jesus made. The honest answer is that we know of no reliable published count for either. Storms's total, as reported, covers the whole Bible. Any New Testament number you see online should come with a name and a method. If it does not, we would not lean on it.
What we can tell you is that the New Testament talks about promises a great deal. Peter calls them exceeding great and precious. Paul says they all find their yes in Christ. Hebrews comes back again and again to Abraham and the promise. See Promises in the New Testament for some of them.
How many times the word promise appears in the KJV
This number we can give you, because we counted it ourselves from the text.
| Word | Times in the KJV |
|---|---|
| promise | 53 |
| promised | 48 |
| promises | 13 |
| promisedst (an old form of promised) | 3 |
| promising | 1 |
| All forms | 118, in 112 verses |
How we counted. We took two separate digital copies of the King James text, listed below, and counted every word that begins with the letters p r o m i s, then grouped them by exact spelling. Both copies gave the same totals.
Two things stand out. First, the Old Testament uses the word 46 times and the New Testament 72 times, even though the Old Testament has about three times as many verses. Second, the book that uses it most is Hebrews, with 18, then Galatians with 11. Both letters explain how God's old promise to Abraham reaches people through Christ.
Keep in mind that most promises never use the word. When God told Abram, I will make of thee a great nation, the word promise is nowhere in the sentence, yet it is one of the most important promises in Scripture. A word count shows where the Bible talks about promises. It does not count the promises themselves.
How many verses are in the Bible?
Since people often ask this next, we counted that too, from the same two texts. The King James Bible has 66 books, 1,189 chapters and 31,102 verses: 23,145 in the Old Testament and 7,957 in the New.
Did God promise us a number of years?
Some people search for how many years God promised us to live. Psalm 90:10 says the days of our years are threescore years and ten, or eighty by reason of strength. That psalm is a prayer describing a normal human life, not a promise of a set number of years. Genesis 6:3 speaks of a hundred and twenty years, which some readers take as a limit on a lifespan and others as the time left before the flood. Your days are in God's hands, and no verse sets a number for you.
The number matters less than the next one you read
Counting promises is a good and interesting thing to do. Storms read the Bible through twenty-seven times, and that kind of attention to God's word is worth admiring. But nobody lives on a total. You live on the one promise that meets you today. Whatever the count, Paul said every one of them is yea in Christ.
If you want to start with that one promise, try our list of God's promises sorted by need, or read what the promises of God are first.
Read them one at a time
Book Two numbers Promises 296 through 620, from Numbers through Esther. It counts each time God speaks a promise, so when God repeats His word to Joshua or to David, you meet it again at the moment it was given. Read the opening pages free with Look Inside on Amazon.