For years I’ve heard that the middle chapter of the King James Bible is Psalm 118,
and therefore the middle verse of the Bible is verse 8:
“It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”

How nifty!  What a great thought to center your life around!

And it has 14 words (7, the number of completeness
and perfection in the Bible, doubled).
And how inspiring that the two middle words
of the middle verse are “the Lord”!

It all made such an inspiring package
but it turns out the center verse of the Bible
is a bit cloudy.

What a shock to just learn a few minutes ago

that Psalm 118 is not the middle chapter.  Since there are 594 chapters from Genesis 1 to Psalm 116 and 594 chapters from Psalm 118 to Revelation 22, that makes Psalm 117 the middle chapter.

And since Psalm 117 also has the distinction of being the shortest chapter in the Bible, with only two verses, that means there is no middle verse using the chapter fulcrum.

So the two middle verses are:  “Oh, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples!   For His merciful kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever.  Praise the Lord!”

Hey, not too shabby thoughts either!

Then somebody claims that the KJV Bible has an even number of verses:  31,174.  Using verses rather than chapters brings us back to Psalm 118:8-9.

But wait, it turns out people using computerized programs come up with disagreeing numbers for how many words in the KJV Bible.  Maybe the most accepted one is based on the 1769 edition of the 1611 KJV, coming up with  total of 31,102 words.

This would make the middle verses of the Bible

Psalm 103:1-2:  “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name!  Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”

The next verse (3) completes a powerful thought that God forgives all our iniquities and heals all our diseases!

Well, it took astronomers centuries to debate about the center of the universe, and it appears like it really is not that simple to determine the center verse of the Bible.

I’m certainly not going to bother counting!

But with any of the three sections quoted above,  you won’t go wrong centering your life around them.

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