... is, by some distance, the shortest book in the Old Testament – regardless of whether you count chapters, verses or words.
It's the only book in the Old Testament that has just one chapter. It has 21 verses, and 440 words.
The next shortest (by word count) is Nahum, which has three chapters, a total of 47 verses, and 855 words.
Second shortest on number of chapters and number of verses is Haggai, which has two chapters and a total of 38 verses; but it has 926 words.
There are four books in the New Testament with only one chapter:
The Third Epistle of John has one chapter, 14 verses, and 219 words.
The Second Epistle of John has one chapter, 13 verses, and 245 words.
The Epistle of Paul to Philemon has one chapter, 25 verses, and 335 words.
The General Epistle of Jude has one chapter, 25 verses, and 461 words.
Obadiah is third shortest overall (i.e. in both Old and New Testaments) by number of verses, and fourth shortest by number of words.
The word counts are courtesy of overviewbible.com, which explains: "I got these word counts using Word Lists in Logos Bible Software. Again, these aren't listed by English word count: this is from the underlying Greek and Hebrew."
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2017