Your faith is worth more than gold
~ 1 Peter 1:7
Bible numerics
By numerics we do not mean numerology. Numerology is from the occult. It attempts to divine the future by drawing significance from numbers. God says not to do that [Leviticus 19:26; Deuteronomy 18:10-12]
By numerics we mean the observation that God has planted an order in the world and in His Word. The number seven, for example, recurs throughout the Bible ÔÇô as in the number of days of creation, the days of a week, the number of biblical feasts, and others.
Both the Old and the New Testaments teem with numeric patterns of seven, as we shall see. No writings of other religions display the phenomenon. We draw the conclusion that only God could have created such a pattern. It could not have occurred by chance. It is further evidence of the seal, or signature, of God. It is proof of divine authorship.
Numerics in the Hebrew Bible
Genesis 1:1 will serve as an example:
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
In the original Hebrew, it would look like this ÔÇô read from right to left:
There are seven words in the verse.
There are 28 letters ÔÇô divisible by seven.
The first three words have 14 letters ÔÇô divisible by seven.
The last four words have 14 letters ÔÇô divisible by seven.
The fourth and fifth words have seven letters.
The sixth and seventh words have seven letters.
The key words: God, heaven, and earth, have 14 letters ÔÇô divisible by seven.
The remaining words have 14 letters ÔÇô divisible by seven.
The middle word is the shortest, with two letters. However, the words to the right and left of it have 5 letters each ÔÇô combining with either would give seven.
Sceptics have said that the pattern is not significant. However, they are unable to find the phenomenon in writings other than the Bible, and they are unable to create the full effect, even with computers and a contrived language. Scripture abounds with mathematical features of seven which are too numerous for us to do more than touch upon, by way of illustration. Here is another example.
Our numerals come to us from India. In Bible times, Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek had no such characters. To convey numbers, a numeric value was assigned to each letter of the alphabet.
This is a table of the numeric values for each character in biblical Hebrew:
|
Num. value
|
Hebrew letter
|
Final form
|
Phonetic spelling in English
|
|
1
|
|
|
ALEPH
|
|
2
|
|
|
BET
|
|
3
|
|
|
GIMEL
|
|
4
|
|
|
DALET
|
|
5
|
|
|
HEH
|
|
6
|
|
|
VAV
|
|
7
|
|
|
ZAYIN
|
|
8
|
|
|
CHET
|
|
9
|
|
|
TET
|
|
10
|
|
|
YUD
|
|
20
|
|
|
KAPH
|
|
30
|
|
|
LAMED
|
|
40
|
|
|
MEM
|
|
50
|
|
|
NUN
|
|
60
|
|
|
SAMEKH
|
|
70
|
|
|
AYIN
|
|
80
|
|
|
PEH
|
|
90
|
|
|
TZADHE
|
|
100
|
|
|
KUF
|
|
200
|
|
|
RESH
|
|
300
|
|
|
SHIN
|
|
400
|
|
|
TAV
|
Now, let us re-examine our example of Genesis 1:1 and establish the numeric value for each Hebrew character:
|
Word
|
Hebrew characters
|
Numeric value
|
|
(BERESHEET)
"In the beginning …
|
BET
RESH
ALEPH
SHIN
YUD
TAV
|
2
200
1
300
10
400
|
|
(BARA)
… created …
|
BET
RESH
ALEPH
|
2
200
1
|
|
(ELOHIM)
… God …
|
ALEPH
LAMED
HEH
YUD
MEM…(final form)
|
1
30
5
10
40
|
|
(ET)
(untranslatable)
|
ALEPH
TAV
|
1
400
|
|
(HA'SHAMAIM)
… the heavens …
|
HEH
SHIN
MEM
YUD
MEM…(final form)
|
5
300
40
10
40
|
|
(VE'ET)
… and …
|
VAV
ALEPH
TAV
|
6
1
400
|
|
(HA'ARETZ)
… the earth …
|
HEH
ALEPH
RESH
TZADHE…(final form)
|
5
1
200
90
|
There are many patterns of seven here, but the following examples will suffice:
The numeric value of the three important nouns ÔÇô God,heavens and earth ÔÇô is 777.
The numeric value of the one verb 'created' is 203, which is divisible by seven.
The numeric value of the first and last letters of all seven words is 1393, which is divisible by seven.
The numeric value of the first and last letters of the first and last words is 497, which is divisible by seven.
Numerics in the New Testament
Every passage in every book in the New Testament, examined in the original language of Greek, has multiple constructs of seven.
For example, the first eleven verses of Matthew, the first book, gives the genealogy of Jesus from Abraham to the captivity in Babylon. It has a vocabulary of 49 words (7 x 7). Also:
28 words begin with a vowel ÔÇô divisible by seven.
21 words begin with a consonant ÔÇô divisible by seven.
42 words end with a consonant ÔÇô divisible by seven.
Seven words end with a vowel.
There are 266 letters ÔÇô divisible by seven.
140 letters are vowels ÔÇô divisible by seven.
126 letters are consonants ÔÇô divisible by seven.
35 words occur more than once in the passage ÔÇô divisible by seven.
14 words occur once only ÔÇô divisible by seven.
42 words are nouns ÔÇô divisible by seven.
35 words are proper names ÔÇô divisible by seven.
28 are male ancestors ÔÇô divisible by seven.
We could go on and on and on, but you surely get the message.
Numerics in the combined Old and New Testaments
Computers have been used to analyse the text of the entire Bible, in the original languages. It should be noted that if even one word were deleted, changed or added, anywhere in Scripture, then most numeric patterns would disappear.
The number of words in the vocabulary divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that begin with a vowel divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that begin with a consonant divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that begin with each letter of the language's alphabet divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that occur more than once divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that occur only once divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that occur in only one form divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that occur in more than one form divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that are nouns divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that are not nouns divide evenly by seven.
The number of letters in the vocabulary divide evenly by seven.
The number of letters that are vowels divide evenly by seven.
The number of letters that are consonants divide evenly by seven.
The number of proper names divide evenly by seven.
The number of male proper names divide evenly by seven.
The number of female proper names divide evenly by seven.
The total numeric value of all the words divide evenly by seven.
The number of words that are found in only one book of the Bible divide evenly by seven.
One followed by six noughts is a million. One followed by nine noughts is a billion. One followed by one hundred noughts is a googol. A googol can be referenced by the thought that if a bird was to take a peck once a day against a solid diamond the size of Mount Everest, it would take a googol of years to erode the diamond to sea level. The mathematical chance that all the features of the Torah code and the numeric patterns in the Bible occurred randomly and by accident are one in a googol.
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