Passage Search Endpoint

Our passage search endpoint, located at /v3/passage/search/, provides verse results for a word or phrase search of the ESV text.

Example Request and Response

A simple request using cURL would look like this:

curl -L -H 'Authorization: Token YOUR_API_KEY' 'https://api.esv.org/v3/passage/search/?q=rabble'

You will receive a JSON response containing metadata about the result set and the results themselves:

{
    "page": 1,
    "total_results": 3,
    "results": [
        {
            "reference": "Numbers 11:4",
            "content": "Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, \u201cOh that we had meat to eat!"
        },
        {
            "reference": "Job 30:12",
            "content": "On my right hand the rabble rise; they push away my feet; they cast up against me their ways of destruction."
        },
        {
            "reference": "Acts 17:5",
            "content": "But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd."
        }
    ],
    "total_pages": 1
}

---

Required Parameters

Name: q
Type: string
Default: ''

The search query. If you want results for an exact phrase, wrap your query in double quotes. For instance, the query in love returns many more results than the query "in love" because the latter only returns matches for the exact phrase.

---

Optional Parameters

Name: page-size
Type: integer
Default: 20

The number of results per page. This parameter's maximum value is 100.

---

Name: page
Type: integer
Default: 1

Which page of results you want. This parameter works in conjunction with the page-size parameter.