The eigenenergy spectrum of the Jaynes–Cummings (JC) model with and without the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) is investigated. The numerical analysis indicates that the non-RWA spectrum can only be approximated by the RWA in the range of sufficiently small coupling constant and detuning. In other region, the counter-rotating terms remarkably change the nature of the RWA energy spectrum. A simple expression with high accuracy for ground eigenenergy and eigenvector for non-RWA is available. The ground eigenvector for non-RWA shows that the ground state is not a dark state and very different from that of RWA which is a dark state.