The number 29

Departure, going away

The clearest scriptural occurrence of twenty-nine is a reign length: Amaziah, king of Judah, reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem (2 Kings 14:2; 2 Chronicles 25:1). Bullinger's Number in Scripture gives the number one line, calling it 'the combination of 20, the number of expectation, and 9, the number of judgment,' and draws no conclusion about departure from that combination. The label 'departure, going away' traces to Ed F. Vallowe's Biblical Mathematics (1998), not to Bullinger, and does not follow from his own math. Treat it as later tradition resting on a single arithmetic pairing rather than a pattern the text itself teaches; no verse calls twenty-nine a sign of leaving.

The mathematics

The tenth prime, and a twin prime with 31.
29 = 2² + 3² + 4² — the sum of three consecutive squares.
A Lucas number, sitting alongside the Fibonacci sequence.

Every property here was checked before it was printed.

The same number, in what He made

The moon's month is twenty-nine and a half days — 29.53059 exactly, new moon to new moon (NASA Goddard). Which is why lunar calendars alternate months of twenty-nine and thirty days, and why the new moon is watched for rather than calculated.

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

Expectation joined to judgment — twenty plus nine.

“Is the combination of 20, the number of expectation, and 9, the number of judgment.”

E. W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture (1894)

“Mountains.”

Troy Brewer, Numbers That Preach (2007)

In Hebrew and Greek

Hebrew

Esrim v'tesha (עֶשְׂרִים וְתֵשַׁע) - twenty-nine

Greek

Eikosi ennea (εἴκοσι ἐννέα) - twenty-nine

First occurrence

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The pattern in Scripture

Amaziah reigned 29 years (2 Kings 14:2)
Prime number - indivisible

29:29 verses

Genesis 29:29

And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid.

Exodus 29:29

And the holy garments of Aaron shall be his sons’ after him, to be anointed therein, and to be conse...

Numbers 29:29

And on the sixth day eight bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year without blemish:

Deuteronomy 29:29

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us a...

1 Chronicles 29:29

Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of Samuel the s...