Questions God Asks
Every question God asks in the Bible, from "Where are you?" to "Will a man rob God?", and who each was asked of.
BibleVerse research
Questions God asks, questions Jesus asks
Set side by side, the two sets of questions differ in how often they are asked, how they begin, whom they are about, and the words they use. They also echo each other.
The counts remain based on the Berean Standard Bible. The switcher changes the displayed verses, not the analysis; when an edition lacks a book or verse, the BSB text remains visible.
The short answer
2×Jesus asks about twice as often, for the amount he speaks: 15.5 questions per 100 verses, against 7.9 for God
53.1%of God's questions can be answered yes or no, against 37.8% of Jesus's
1question asked in exactly the same words by both: “What is your name?”
The first set contains more questions in all, 401 against 310, because it draws from far more of the Bible. Relative to the number of verses in which each speaker appears, Jesus asks questions about twice as often. Questions in the God set are more often yes-or-no and refer more often to the speaker. Questions in the Jesus set more often begin with what, why or how and refer more often to the listener. Israel, land and people occur more often in the first set; believe, understand and faith occur more often in the second.
This page reads the two collections built on Questions God asks and Questions Jesus asks, with the same method on both. Jesus's questions are counted once each, 225, where the Gospels tell the same question more than once.
How often they ask
God speaks in 5,076 verses of the Bible where the speaker is certain, and asks 401 questions in them: 7.9 questions for every 100 verses. Jesus speaks in 2,003 verses of the New Testament and asks 310: 15.5 for every 100. 13.2% of the verses in which Jesus speaks contain a question, against 6.0% of God's. Both counts here include every telling of a question and every verse, so the parallels in the Gospels do not tip the scale.
GodJesus
- Questions per 100 verses of speech
- Share of their verses with a question
Verses of speech: 5,076 for God, 2,003 for Jesus. The second row is a percentage.
How the questions begin
More than half of God's questions, 53.1%, can be answered yes or no: “Is anything too difficult for Me?”, “Have you considered My servant Job?” Of Jesus's, 37.8%. Jesus's questions more often open with “what” (17.3% against 10.0%), “why” (12.0% against 7.7%) and “how” (9.3% against 3.2%), questions that ask for an answer in the hearer's own words. God's more often open with “who” (14.7% against 7.6%), many of them in the whirlwind speech to Job: “Who fixed its measurements?”
GodJesus
- A yes-or-no question
- What
- Who, whom or whose
- Why
- How
- Which
- Where
- How long
- When
Jesus's questions counted once each, 225; God's, 401.
About whom, and to whom
God's questions refer to God more often: 36.9% of them say I, Me or My, against 26.2% of Jesus's. Jesus's refer to the hearer more often: 66.2% say you or your, against 56.6% of God's.
Leaving out the 69 questions to Job, both put about one question in five to a single person: 20.5% of God's and 22.2% of Jesus's. With Job counted, God's figure is 34.2%. God's other questions go mostly to a whole people through the prophets; Jesus's go mostly to his disciples as a group, to crowds and to religious leaders.
GodJesus
- Refer to the asker: I, Me, My
- Refer to the hearer: you, your
- Asked of one person
- Asked of one person, leaving out Job
Words that appear more often in each set
After common grammatical words are removed, Israel, land, people, fathers and Judah occur more often in the God set. This reflects its frequent focus on a people and a land; Israel appears 23 times and not at all in the Jesus set. Believe, understand, think, read, faith and love occur more often in the Jesus set, where many questions take place in teaching conversations. Questions from Jesus also use the word God 18 times, compared with 10 in the other set, where the speaker often says I or Me instead.
- 1israel 23 to 0
- 2land 16 to 0
- 3people 14 to 2
- 4abominations 6 to 0
- 5away 6 to 0
- 6fathers 6 to 0
- 7great 6 to 0
- 8judah 6 to 0
- 9turn 6 to 0
- 10hands 8 to 1
- 11make 8 to 1
- 12birth 5 to 0
- 1believe 12 to 1
- 2god 18 to 10
- 3say 14 to 6
- 4sabbath 10 to 0
- 5understand 7 to 1
- 6think 8 to 0
- 7father 9 to 4
- 8read 7 to 0
- 9love 6 to 1
- 10eat 6 to 2
- 11faith 6 to 0
- 12little 6 to 0
The number beside each bar is a z-score for how far the word leans to one side; the pair of counts is the number of times in God's questions and in Jesus's. With question sets this small, the scores are modest: they rank the words, and a score near 1 is a lean, not a certainty.
Echoes
Only one question appears in exactly the same words in both sets. Others echo each other in what they ask and when. The pairs below are an editor's choice, not a measurement, set side by side for reading.
The first questions: God's first in the Bible, and Jesus's first in the order of his life.
The only question asked in exactly the same words in both sets.
Asking where someone's brother is.
How long, asked of a people who will not believe.
Asked by name, of a servant who had fled or failed.
Life out of death.
How this was made
The two sets. Both were built the same way: Faith Comes By Hearing's verse-by-verse speaker assignments, published with SIL's Glyssen project under the MIT licence, mark who is speaking; every question in the Berean Standard Bible in those verses is a candidate; stated rules and written hand decisions settle each one. Their methods and full lists are on Questions God asks and Questions Jesus asks.
The measures. How often: questions per 100 verses in which the speaker is certain. How they begin: the first word of each question after any name it is addressed to. Asker and hearer: whether the question contains I, Me, My, Mine or Myself, and you, your, yours or yourself. One person: a hand list of the addressees who are individuals, from Adam to Jonah and from Peter to Saul. The words: the weighted log-odds ratio with an informative prior (Monroe, Colaresi and Quinn, 2008), after the grammatical words listed on the map of meaning's word page, twelve words a side. Every figure is rounded once, to one decimal. This page was made with AI assistance and human review.
The data. Every figure on this page is in questions-compared.json, built from the two question files.
Corrections are welcome through the contact page.
Questions people ask
Who asks more questions in the Bible, God or Jesus?
God asks more in total, 401 against Jesus's 310, because God speaks in far more of the Bible. For the amount each speaks, Jesus asks about twice as often: 15.5 questions per 100 verses of his speech, against 7.9 for God.
How are the two sets of questions different?
Questions in the God set are more often yes-or-no, 53.1% against 37.8%, and refer more often to the speaker. Questions in the Jesus set more often begin with what, why or how and refer more often to the hearer. Israel, land and people occur more often in the God set; believe, understand and faith occur more often in the Jesus set.
Do God and Jesus ever ask the same question?
Once in exactly the same words: "What is your name?", asked of Jacob by the one who wrestled with him (Genesis 32:27) and by Jesus of a man possessed by demons (Mark 5:9). Many others echo each other, and this page sets a few side by side.
Why does this page compare God and Jesus as separate speakers?
It separates two sets of speech for textual analysis, not to make a theological claim. Most Christian traditions teach that Jesus is divine, while Christian communities differ in how they describe his relationship to God.
Explore related research
Questions Jesus Asks
Every question Jesus asks in the Gospels, who he asked, and the same question told more than once.
Questions People Ask God and Jesus, Compared
How the questions begin, who asks them, whom they are about, and where they echo each other.