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50 free Bible Verses trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Everyone half-knows a Bible verse. The line on the war memorial, the reading at the wedding, the cry from the cross, the slogan on a footballer's face paint: they float free of the chapters that hold them, and a few of the most quoted never came from the Bible at all. These 50 questions put them back. Finish famous phrases from the King James text, name the book a verse comes from, say who spoke it and to whom, and untangle the context of passages from the creation story to the epistles and the Apocalypse. Expect some surprises about who actually said what, and which animal lies down with the lamb. It suits a church quiz night, a Sunday-school staff room or a pub round that wants something beyond sport. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it out and read it aloud.
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Q 01Which two-word verse, the shortest in the King James Bible, comes as Christ nears Lazarus's tomb?
Jesus wept
Jesus wept is John 11:35, and moments after it Christ has the stone rolled away and calls Lazarus out alive. He had first asked the mourners where the body had been laid.
Q 02Which phrase opens the verse Tim Tebow wrote on his eye black at the 2009 BCS title game?
For God so loved the world
For God so loved the world opens John 3:16, and Tebow's eye black made the citation the most popular search term online for more than 24 hours. Evangelists paint the same reference on stadium signs to catch the cameras.
Q 03Which word completes 'The Lord is my ___; I shall not want', the first line of funeral favourite Psalm 23?
shepherd
Shepherd was David's own trade: the psalm's heading ascribes it to the king said to have tended flocks as a youth. It became a funeral fixture only in the 20th century, and films with funeral scenes often stage a graveside recital of it.
Q 04What does 1 Timothy 6:10, a verse people routinely shorten, actually call 'the root of all evil'?
the love of money
The love of money, not money itself, is the culprit in the King James text, which adds that some who coveted it were 'pierced through with many sorrows'. Grammarian Daniel Wallace lists six possible translations of the Greek.
Q 05Which familiar saying is not scripture at all but a line popularised by Butler's 1663 mock-epic Hudibras?
Spare the rod, spoil the child
Spare the rod, spoil the child first appears in Hudibras, whose satire of Puritans ran in three parts from 1663 to 1678. The Bible's nearest verse says only that whoever spares his rod hates his son.
Q 06Which Poor Richard's Almanack maxim is widely mistaken for scripture but appears nowhere in the Bible?
God helps those who help themselves
God helps those who help themselves was coined by Algernon Sidney, and Benjamin Franklin borrowed it for the 1736 almanac. The sentiment runs against Bible passages that stress reliance on God rather than self.
Q 07Which book's third chapter, 'To every thing there is a season', became Pete Seeger's 'Turn! Turn! Turn!'?
Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 supplies every line of the song except the title and the last two, and the Byrds took it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1965. Seeger said he wrote it in 1954.
Q 08In which Tarantino film does hitman Jules Winnfield recite a paraphrased 'Ezekiel 25:17' before shooting?
Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction has Jules deliver the passage before he and Vincent kill Brett, the screenplay stretching a short verse about vengeance into a full speech. The 1994 film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Q 09Which US agency's headquarters lobby bears 'And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free'?
CIA
The CIA's Old Headquarters Building has John 8:32 engraved on a marble wall at the request of Allen Dulles, the former Director of Central Intelligence. The Langley complex is named for George H. W. Bush.
Q 10Which Senate candidate built an 1858 Springfield speech around 'A house divided against itself cannot stand'?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was quoting Mark 3:25, where Jesus answers the charge that he casts out devils by the prince of devils. The campaign failed against Stephen Douglas but led to the famous debates between them.
Q 11Which Peanuts character recites 'Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings' in A Charlie Brown Christmas?
Linus
Linus drops his security blanket, asks for a spotlight and recites the King James account of the angel's announcement to explain what Christmas is all about. The special first aired on December 9, 1965.
Q 12Which command, the first divine words in the Bible, is spoken in Genesis before sun, moon or stars exist?
Let there be light
Let there be light comes in Genesis 1:3, while the sun and moon are not made until the fourth day, a puzzle that has occupied commentators for two millennia. In the Latin Vulgate it is the famous 'fiat lux'.
Q 13Which chapter, opening 'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down', became a five-week UK number one for Boney M.?
Q 21Which prophet volunteered 'Here am I; send me' after a seraph touched his lips with a live coal from the altar?
Isaiah
Isaiah's commission in chapter 6 follows a vision of the Lord enthroned among six-winged seraphim crying 'Holy, holy, holy', the coal purging the sin of a man of 'unclean lips'. The scene is dated to the year King Uzziah died.
Q 22Which disciple was rebuked with 'Get thee behind me, Satan' only verses after being named the rock of the church?
Peter
Peter had just objected to Jesus predicting his own death, and the reply in Matthew 16:23 calls him 'an offence unto me'. Verses 18 and 19 had made him the rock and handed him the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Q 23Jesus's cry from the cross, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?', quotes the opening of which chapter?
Psalm 137
Psalm 137 is the exiles' lament for Zion, and the song 'Rivers of Babylon' was first written and recorded by the Melodians in Jamaica in 1970 before Boney M. covered it. The lyric also borrows a line from Psalm 19.
Q 14Which animal 'shall dwell with the lamb' in the peaceable-kingdom prophecy where 'a little child shall lead them'?
the wolf
The wolf gets the lamb in the King James text, while the lion is paired with the calf and the fatling in the same verse and eats straw like the ox in the next. The popular 'lion shall lie down with the lamb' is a conflation.
Q 15In which book do the Ten Commandments first appear, delivered at Mount Sinai amid thunder and fire?
Exodus
Exodus 20 gives the commandments first, and the Torah repeats them in Deuteronomy 5 and again, in a markedly different 'ritual' form, in Exodus 34. Jewish and Christian traditions even number the ten differently.
Q 16Who answered God's question about Abel's whereabouts with 'I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?'
Cain
Cain was condemned to be a fugitive and a wanderer for killing his brother, yet God put a mark on him so that no one who came upon him would kill him. Genesis then has him build the first city.
Q 17Who said 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away' after raiders, fire and wind took his herds and children?
Job
Job lost oxen, asses, sheep and ten children in a single day of arriving messengers, and still 'sinned not, nor charged God foolishly'. His restoration at the end of the book doubles his livestock.
Q 18Which petition follows 'Thy kingdom come' in the Lord's Prayer as Matthew records it in the Sermon on the Mount?
Thy will be done
Thy will be done, 'as it is in heaven', is the third petition; the request for daily bread follows, and Matthew's wording of the whole prayer sits inside the Sermon on the Mount's teaching on praying in secret.
Q 19Which letter Paul wrote in custody holds 'I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me'?
Philippians
Philippians 4:13 was written by a prisoner thanking a church for a gift, which is why its boast sits right after 'I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content'. Philippi lay in Macedonia.
Q 20Which prophet told King David 'Thou art the man' after a parable about a rich man seizing a poor man's one lamb?
Nathan
Nathan's trap closed when David condemned the rich man of the story, unaware he was judging his own taking of Bathsheba from Uriah. The prophet later helped secure the throne for Solomon.
Psalm 22
Psalm 22 opens with the words Matthew and Mark put in Jesus's mouth, kept in Aramaic as 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani' in Matthew and 'Eloi, Eloi' in Mark. The same poem speaks of pierced hands and feet and of lots cast for clothing.
Q 24'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet' sits in which chapter, the longest in the Bible at 176 verses?
Psalm 119
Psalm 119 is an acrostic: its 176 verses run in 22 stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, with every line of a stanza beginning with that letter. The lamp line is verse 105.
Q 25In which town's synagogue did Jesus quote 'Physician, heal thyself' before the crowd tried to throw him off a hill?
Nazareth
Nazareth was where Jesus had been brought up, and its congregation, told 'no prophet is accepted in his own country', led him to the brow of the hill to cast him down headlong. Luke says he simply passed through them.
Q 26Which coin did Jesus call for before answering 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's'?
denarius
A denarius with the head of Tiberius is the coin usually assumed, since the Greek calls it a dēnarion, and Jesus asked whose image it bore before answering. Pharisees and Herodians had posed the question to trap him.
Q 27Of what was the woman accused when Jesus said 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone'?
adultery
Adultery 'in the very act' was the charge, and the law of Moses prescribed stoning; the accusers drifted away one by one, eldest first. The whole passage is missing from the oldest Greek manuscripts of John.
Q 28At whose feast did a hand write 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin' on the wall, words Daniel read as the kingdom's doom?
Belshazzar
Belshazzar was killed that very night and Darius the Mede received the kingdom; the feast had been drunk from gold vessels looted from the Jerusalem temple. Rembrandt painted the instant the hand appears.
Q 29To whom did Ruth vow 'Whither thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people' on the road from Moab?
Naomi
Naomi was Ruth's widowed mother-in-law, heading home to Bethlehem after losing her husband and both sons; her other daughter-in-law Orpah kissed her and turned back. Ruth's loyalty makes her great-grandmother of David.
Q 30Which boy, sleeping where the ark was kept, answered a night-time call with 'Speak; for thy servant heareth'?
Samuel
Samuel had run to the old priest Eli three times, thinking it was he who called, before Eli realised the Lord was speaking and told the boy how to reply. He grew up to anoint Israel's first two kings.