How to Read the Bible: In Order, Chronologically or Book by Book

What are the three main ways to read the Bible?

Nearly every reading plan is a version of one of three orders. None of them is the correct one, and each has a cost:

This guide is about the long road. If you only want to know which book to open first, where to start reading the Bible has a first-month plan.

How to read the Bible in order

Many people assume the Bible is printed in the order things happened. It isn’t. The books are grouped by type: law, history, poetry, prophets, then Gospels, letters and Revelation. So the story runs from Genesis to Esther, pauses for Job and the Psalms, then circles back through the prophets, who spoke during the years of the kings and the exile.

Once you expect that, it’s fine. The best thing about reading in order is that you never have to decide anything. You finish a chapter and turn the page, and you reach every book, including the ones a looser plan lets you skip.

The cost is the slow early stretch and the long wait for the New Testament. At about 9 minutes a day, you reach Leviticus in February and Matthew in October. Our month-by-month plan splits that year evenly by reading time.

Choose this if you like finishing what you start and a dry stretch won’t put you off.

How to read the Bible chronologically

A chronological plan rearranges the books so you meet events in the order they happened. You read Psalm 51, David’s prayer after he took Bathsheba, right after the prophet Nathan confronts him in 2 Samuel 12. You read Amos and Isaiah beside the kings they spoke to, and Paul’s letters inside the story of Acts, around the time he may have written them.

No two plans agree exactly, because many dates are debated. Nobody knows where Job belongs, for one. Most plans follow this outline:

1. The beginnings: Genesis, often with Job placed near Abraham’s time.
2. Exodus and the wilderness: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
3. The land: Joshua, Judges and Ruth.
4. The kings: Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, with Psalms, Proverbs and the earlier prophets beside them.
5. Exile and return: Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel, then Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and the last prophets.
6. Jesus and the church: the Gospels, Acts with Paul’s letters woven in, the other letters and Revelation.

The reward is seeing one long history where you used to see 66 separate books. The catch is that you can’t just turn the page. You have to follow a list, and it can split a book across several weeks, so it usually works better as a second pass than a first.

Choose this if you’ve read some of the Bible already and want to see how the pieces fit.

How to read the Bible book by book

This is the easiest plan to start. Choose one book, read it to the end, then choose the next. Most books were written to stand on their own, so you meet them the way their first readers did. Philippians was a letter to a church, meant to be heard from start to finish.

You also get regular finish lines. Ruth takes about 10 minutes and Mark about an hour, so you can finish something this week instead of waiting a year. To avoid reading six letters in a row, rotate through these:

1. A Gospel.
2. A stretch of Old Testament story, such as Genesis, Exodus or 1 Samuel.
3. A short letter, such as James or Philippians.
4. Some poetry or wisdom, such as 30 psalms or Proverbs.
5. Then start again, adding the prophets as you go.

Keep a list of all 66 books and tick them off. Without one, you can read Mark four times and never reach Numbers. With one, book by book becomes a slower path through the whole Bible.

Choose this if you’re starting out, or a longer plan has stalled on you before.

Which way should you choose?

Start with what has stopped you before:

• You’ve never read much of the Bible. Go book by book. Finishing a short book gives you the confidence for a longer one.
• You started at Genesis and stalled. Go book by book for a while, or try a plan that reads from both Testaments each day.
• You know the stories but not how they connect. Go chronologically.
• You don’t want to think about what comes next. Go in order, and let the next page decide.

You can change your mind. Chapters you’ve read still count, whichever plan you read them on, and you may well try all three over the years.

How long does each way take?

The same, because the words don’t change. The World English Bible has 756,207 words in 1,189 chapters, about 53 hours at an average reading pace. Your finish date depends on your daily pace, not your order:

Our guide to how long it takes to read the Bible times every book.

How to read each kind of book

Whichever order you choose, the Bible isn’t one kind of writing, and each kind asks for its own pace:

• Stories: read in long pieces and follow what happens.
• Law: read for what it shows about Israel’s life with God. You don’t need to remember every rule.
• Poetry: slow down. The Psalms think in pictures, so give each one a moment before you move on.
• Proverbs: read a few at a time. They describe what’s usually true, and they aren’t promises.
• Prophets: find out who was being addressed and when.
• Letters: read the whole thing in one sitting first, as you would any letter.

One line from Psalm 119 makes a good start to any of them: “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things out of your law.” (Psalm 119:18). The psalm is talking about God’s law, so it even works in Leviticus.

Common questions