Word searchesBooks and people
Bible word search
A word search built from 32 names of Bible books, people and places, from JOB and EVE to DEUTERONOMY and PHILIPPIANS. It suits Sunday school classes, church groups and families who read the Bible together.
- Type your details or print blank
- Answer key on its own page
- Print or PDF, Letter or A4
- Free, no sign-up
On this page
This sheet gathers names from the Bible into a word search. It does not teach doctrine or retell stories; it is a spelling and recognition exercise that can sit alongside whatever your group is reading. The page opens on the Bible theme at Medium.
What prints
The page title is "Bible Word Search". An instruction line gives the number of hidden words and their directions. The grid sits in a ruled box, with the word list below it in columns and a small empty square beside each name. The second page is the answer key: found words are outlined and bold, and filler letters are pale grey.
The word list
There are 32 entries in three groups. Books: ACTS, RUTH, JOHN, MARK, LUKE, JOB, AMOS, JOEL, GENESIS, EXODUS, PSALMS, MATTHEW, LEVITICUS, DEUTERONOMY, PROVERBS, REVELATION, PHILIPPIANS and CORINTHIANS. People: ADAM, EVE, NOAH, DAVID, ABRAHAM, JOSEPH, SAMUEL, SOLOMON, ELIJAH, DANIEL and ESTHER. Places: NAZARETH, JERUSALEM and BETHLEHEM. Some names belong to both a book and a person, such as JOHN, MARK, LUKE, RUTH and JOB, and the list does not mark which is meant.
The settings
- Title (optional): a heading such as "Sunday School Lesson 12".
- Theme: pre-set to Bible; any other subject, or a custom list, can be chosen instead.
- Difficulty: Easy gives a 10 × 10 grid, across and down, 10 words of 8 letters or fewer; Medium gives 14 × 14 with diagonals and 16 words; Hard gives 17 × 17 in all directions with 22 words.
- Large print: 12 × 12 and 12 words at most, in bigger type.
- Lowercase letters: lowercase letters.
DEUTERONOMY and REVELATION are long enough to take up most of a Medium row, and PHILIPPIANS has 12 letters. The Easy level leaves them out and keeps the short ones.
Using it in a group
A class leader can use the printed list as a roll call of the books: after solving, put the books in the order they appear in the Bible, using the table of contents in your own copy. Another approach is to ask each person to pick a found name and tell the group one thing they know about it. For a mixed-age group, give younger children Easy puzzles and older children Hard.
If you want a list that matches a single week's reading, type your own words into the word search maker. The Library of Congress hosts an online Bible Collection exhibition with images of historic manuscripts and printed Bibles, which some groups may find a useful companion.
Worked example: a Sunday school class of ten
Ms. Okafor teaches nine- and ten-year-olds. This week the class studied the book of Ruth. She prints ten Medium puzzles with the title "Our Study: Names and Books", and opens the class with five minutes of searching. A student finds RUTH and NAZARETH right away; another cannot find SOLOMON and asks whether it could be running backwards. Ms. Okafor points to the instruction line, which says across, down and diagonally, so she looks along diagonals and finds it going down and to the right.
After the puzzle, Ms. Okafor asks each child to choose one found word and write a sentence about it in their notebook. The students who finish early use the answer key to check their circles. The page goes home with a note for parents.
Related puzzles
For different content, try the easy word search or the space word search. The large print word search suits older members of a group.