How many characters are in Numbers in Chinese?

36,709 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,302 distinct characters, across 1,272 verses and 36 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Numbers?

57.9% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 68.9% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Numbers take to read in Chinese?

About 141 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Numbers a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 40 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Numbers in Chinese: 1,302 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Numbers in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Numbers follows Israel through forty years of wandering between Sinai and the edge of Canaan, interleaving census lists, laws and episodes of rebellion.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Numbers on this site: characters from the simplified text, words from its segmentation, HSK levels from the word lists. The difficulty rank compares this book with the other 65 by the share of word tokens at HSK 1-3.

Numbers in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	36
Verses	1,272
Chinese characters	36,709
Distinct characters	1,302
Word tokens	27,049
Distinct words	2,169
Average verse	29 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	57.9%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	68.9%
Not in HSK 1-9	24.2%
Difficulty rank	40 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	141 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Numbers uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	耶和华	394
2	要	371
3	人	280
4	说	260
5	摩西	241
6	一	234
7	只	231
8	祭	216
9	献	201
10	有	194
11	利	186
12	以色列人	170
13	儿子	169
14	行	148
15	巴	136
16	地	134
17	作	130
18	亚	130
19	给	119
20	族	110

Function words excluded. Each word has its own page with pinyin, stroke order and the verses it appears in.

Words that occur in Numbers and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
蓿蔑拆卸纛贪欲实女专权莲子亚门故杀在逃任职上海发胀盂

15 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Numbers

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Numbers 11	64.7%	35	1,220
Numbers 2	64%	34	809
Numbers 35	63.9%	34	1,012
Numbers 19	63.9%	22	739
Numbers 14	63.2%	45	1,399
Numbers 12	62.8%	16	442
Numbers 13	62.4%	33	853
Numbers 31	61.4%	54	1,364

Read it

Numbers in the parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side. Or take its vocabulary deck first, ordered by how often each word occurs in this book.

Questions

How many characters are in Numbers in Chinese?: 36,709 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,302 distinct characters, across 1,272 verses and 36 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Numbers?: 57.9% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 68.9% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 24.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Numbers take to read in Chinese?: About 141 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Numbers a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 40 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Related reference pages

Take it further

97 ready-made vocabulary decks — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
Printable 田字格 worksheets — passages with pinyin, meanings and tracing rows.
The parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side, every word tappable.
The dataset behind these numbers — plain JSON, free to reuse with attribution.

How these numbers were produced

Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain — 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,021 verses.
Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation). A different segmenter gives slightly different word counts; character counts are unaffected.
HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9.
Reading times: 260 characters a minute — an assumption about a fluent adult reader, not a measurement.
Computed: 2026-09-22, from the text on this site.

These are counts anyone can reproduce from the published dataset. They are not a peer-reviewed linguistic study, and the difficulty rankings are one stated formula rather than a validated readability score.

Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike. Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).