# Numbers 29 Repeats Itself Most in Chinese

> Numbers 29 is the most repetitive chapter in the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified): 962 word tokens drawn from only 116 distinct words, so every word is used 8.29 times on average.

Question: most repetitive chapter in the Bible
Answer: Numbers 29 — 8.29×
Page: https://chinese-bible.com/en/reference/most-repetitive-chapter-in-the-bible

Repetition is measured as tokens divided by types — how many times the average word in a chapter gets used. A chapter at 1.5 introduces something new almost every word; a chapter at 8.29, like Numbers 29, says the same things over and over. Chapters under 100 words are excluded, because a short chapter's ratio is noise.

The top of the list is ritual and administrative text: Numbers 29 (8.29×), Numbers 7 (8.23×), Leviticus 13 (6.77×) — offering schedules, census records and priestly instructions, where a formula repeats with one number changed. That makes them dull to read and unusually easy to *read in Chinese*: after the first few verses the vocabulary stops arriving.

At the other end, Psalms 58 runs at 1.4×, with 132 distinct words in 185 — dense poetry, where almost nothing repeats. The Bible's average is 59.4 occurrences per word across the whole text, but that number hides exactly this variation between chapters.

## Most and least repetitive chapters

| Chapter | Word tokens | Distinct words | Uses per word |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Numbers 29 | 962 | 116 | 8.29 |
| Numbers 7 | 1,992 | 242 | 8.23 |
| Leviticus 13 | 1,482 | 219 | 6.77 |
| 1 Chronicles 6 | 1,659 | 275 | 6.03 |
| Joshua 21 | 1,163 | 229 | 5.08 |
| Psalms 58 | 185 | 132 | 1.4 |
| Psalms 14 | 118 | 83 | 1.42 |
| Psalms 11 | 108 | 76 | 1.42 |
| Psalms 53 | 120 | 84 | 1.43 |
| Jeremiah 47 | 164 | 114 | 1.44 |

Chapters under 100 word tokens are excluded; the first five rows are the most repetitive, the last five the least.

## Questions

**Is a repetitive chapter a good place to start reading?**

For practice, yes — the vocabulary load is front-loaded. For interest, less so, which is why the easiest-chapters list ranks by HSK vocabulary instead.

**Why exclude short chapters?**

Because a 40-word chapter cannot repeat much by construction, so its ratio measures its length rather than its style.

**What counts as a word here?**

A segmented token: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation).

## Method

- Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain
- Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation)
- 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)
- Computed: 2026-09-22

These are reproducible counts over a public-domain text, not a peer-reviewed study. Difficulty ranks are one stated formula, not a validated readability score.


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- 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).
- Bible text: public domain — 和合本 · World English Bible · Louis Segond 1910.
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