The number 23

Death, judgment against sin

E. W. Bullinger's Number in Scripture has no chapter on twenty-three; it is absent from his treated numbers entirely. The "death, judgment against sin" association carried by this site is not sourced to Bullinger and does not trace to a specific verse naming twenty-three as death's number. It belongs to later derivative number-meaning lists compiled well after Bullinger's 1894 work. Readers should hold this label as popular tradition only, with no scriptural or Bullinger citation behind it. Where a genuine anchor for judgment themes is wanted, Numbers 14:33-34 (forty years in the wilderness, a year for each of the forty days the spies searched the land) is far better documented; twenty-three itself carries no comparable text in Scripture or in Bullinger.

The mathematics

The ninth prime — and the smallest odd prime with no twin, since both 21 and 25 are composite.
Twenty-three cannot be written as fewer than four squares (9 + 9 + 4 + 1). It is one of the numbers that pushes Lagrange's four-square theorem to its limit.
The birthday problem lands here: twenty-three is the smallest group in which the odds that two people share a birthday first pass one half — 47.6% at twenty-two, 50.7% at twenty-three.

Every property here was checked before it was printed.

The same number, in what He made

Every human cell carries twenty-three pairs of chromosomes — because a child receives exactly twenty-three from his father and twenty-three from his mother (MedlinePlus Genetics, U.S. National Library of Medicine). Two become one, and the arithmetic of it is written into every cell of the child.

Sources are named in the line itself. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”

What they have said about this number

“Death — and, in its redeemed sense, overcoming death and resurrection power.”

Troy Brewer, Numbers That Preach (2007)

In Hebrew and Greek

Hebrew

Esrim v'shalosh (עֶשְׂרִים וְשָׁלוֹשׁ) - twenty-three

Greek

Eikosi treis (εἴκοσι τρεῖς) - twenty-three

First occurrence

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The pattern in Scripture

Psalm 23 - valley of death
23 sins listed in Romans 1:29-31
23,000 fell in one day (1 Cor 10:8)

23:23 verses

Exodus 23:23

For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the ...

Leviticus 23:23

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

Numbers 23:23

Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: accord...

Deuteronomy 23:23

That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform; even a freewill offering, according ...

1 Samuel 23:23

See therefore, and take knowledge of all the lurking places where he hideth himself, and come ye aga...