Numerology

 I wonder whether accountants have a special love for the Bible.  Why do I ask that?  Well, because there are lots and lots of numbers in the Bible.  There’s even a Bible book with that title. The fourth book of the Bible is the book, Numbers.  Amongst other things that book gives us lots of numbers for a census of the people of Israel, tribe by tribe.  That census was conducted just after the Israelites left Egypt.  And then it also gives all the figures for a second census, conducted at the end of their journey as they are about the cross the Jordan River.

I once had a Christian work colleague who had become obsessed by the numbers in the Bible.  He was into what is sometimes called Numerology.  He would take numbers from a certain text in the Bible, add them to other numbers, or perhaps multiply them, and then use the result to support some unusual claim he would make about the Bible and especially about bible prophecy.  Numerology is the belief that there is a mystical meaning to numbers.  In its more extreme form numerologists claim that key numbers have special vibrations and that there is a special relationships between numbers and events.  Much of Numerology is a form of New Age mysticism but my colleague had adopted a Christianised version of it.  I often told him he was making the mistake of allowing his numerology to override the plain and literal meaning of the Bible.  The Bible is not puzzle book for people who love numbers.  It is the story of God’s self-revelation, especially concerning His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And yet… having said that, I would be the first to admit that so often in the Bible, some numbers have a special significance.  For example, it is easy to prove that the number seven is God’s special number.  The opening chapter of the Bible does some interesting things with the number seven.  The number 7 permeates the structure of Genesis chapter 1.  Not only does it introduce us to the seven-day week but in the original Hebrew there are just seven words in the first verse and the second has 14 words (that’s 2x7).  The word ‘God’ occurs 35 time (or 5x7).  There are several other words that occur in multiples of 7.  So, in Genesis 1 the number seven becomes the symbolic marker for divine order and
completeness.

There are two places in the Bible where I am particularly struck by the precision of numbers – and both of them impress on me that the Bible is more than just a human book.  It was written by some forty authors over a period of two millennia.  That makes it virtually impossible for human authors to have deliberately structured some of the numbers the way that they appear in the Bible.

The first example is the book of Isaiah, the prophet.  It has a total of 66 chapters.  What is interesting about that is that there are also 66 books in the Bible.  Furthermore, there are 39 books that make up the Old Testament.  Well, interestingly there is a clear change of tone as we go from Isaiah 39 to Isaiah 40.  Just as the Old Testament ends on a rather negative note, so does the 39th chapter of Isaiah.  Then in Isaiah 40 we get the clear joyful tones of New Testament predictions of the coming of Messiah Jesus and the ministry of John the Baptiser.  A coincidence?  Hardly!  It’s just further evidence that this book, the Bible, is not only a human book.  It is indeed the Word of God.

The second example is Psalm 118.  It is preceded by the shortest chapter in the Bible (Psalm 117) and followed by the longest chapter in the Bible (Psalm 119).  Furthermore there are as many chapters before Psalm 118 (594) as there are after Psalm 118 (also 594).  Again, that is something no human mind could have planned, given the number of authors involved and the time lapse.  Again, it points us to a divine author.  And then just one more numbers fact: in Psalm 118, the divine name, Yahweh, occurs 22 times, exactly the number of characters in the Hebrew alphabet.

And the central verse of that central chapter of the Bible?  These words: “Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!”

John Westendorp
2MaxFM 22/2/2026

PS: Of course chapter and verse numbers were added to the Bible only during the Middles Ages.  For more information about this go to: https://www.gotquestions.org/divided-Bible-chapters-verses.html

 

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