To Number our Days

1000 words long.

Published on 2024-03-03

This article is adapted from the early pages of the chapter named "To Number our Days" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew. I published it before church on Sunday, March 3, 2024. During the service, a church member named Sydney led us in prayer. She recited Psalm 90:12 (quoted later in this article) as part of that prayer. When a church member introduces the same Bible passage into a prayer or sermon as I have been studying during the preceding week or even that morning, I know that the Holy Spirit is speaking and the church is listening.

Math was always my best subject. It is when you combine mathematics and religion that things become weird. The Bible is full of numbers, and when those do not suffice, you can begin counting letters, words, phrases, verses and deadly sins. The Bible holds patterns true and instructive, but also useless patterns pulled from the imagination of clever minds like mine. Look to the sky. Shifting masses of clouds drifting overhead project cotton candy delusions galore, now a fish, now a face, and after a fire breathing dragon, a dissolving mist. Ephemeral patterns are that mist. Numerology is steeped in mind clouding patterns that dazzle and deceive.

In high school, my first stop every morning was the school library, where I copied the daily crypto-quote from the Schenectady Gazette. It was a single substitution cypher: each letter in the puzzle corresponded to a different letter of the alphabet. Crack the code and you were rewarded with a clever quote by a famous person. I usually had it solved before the end of home room. I have solved them in under three minutes on occasion.

Biblical prophecy has elements like a single substitution cypher. Some prophecies are direct, variations of “You screwed up, you are going to die.” In most, elements of the prophecy are symbols that stand for something else. Sometimes the prophet both uses symbols and explains what they mean. For example, in Revelation, John tells us that the beasts are kingdoms and the lamp stands are churches.

The problem with numerology is that while God gave us an inexhaustible supply of unique numbers to play with, some are overused in the Bible. Ambiguity of meaning makes it easy to infer associations that God did not intend. Ecclesiastes is about time. What do we do with time? We count days, weeks, months and years. We divide them, apportion them and assign special meaning to different times. We are forced to deal with numbers when we read Ecclesiastes and Revelation because the subjects they treat are intertwined with numbers.

Teach us to number our days,

that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

- Psalm 90:12, NIV

Are there rules we can follow to avoid misinterpreting numbers in Scripture? Yes, but I am not sure I know them all. Here are rules I follow:

1. The principal of first mention. Look to the first time God introduces a subject in the Bible for its primary, general meaning.
2. The principal of progressive mention. Look to subsequent treatment of a subject in the Bible for refinement and additional details.
3. For a given number, find its most common meaning and prefer that unless stronger reasons compel a different interpretation.
4. Use numbers to suggest a possible association, not prove it. Numbers foster creativity in seeking insights, but base your conclusions on other features of the text.
5. Reject interpretations contradicted by other parts of Scripture.
6. Tread lightly when dealing with genealogies. Subtleties hide within them, like overlapping reigns of judges or kings, dates based on a king’s year of accession (a partial year) versus the first full year of his reign, differences in calendars used by different kingdoms, and misinterpreted endpoints for prophetic timespans.
7. Mind your translation. The Septuagint and the Masoretic Text have numerous differences in the ages of people, plus a different number of names in some genealogies. The former is suspect.
8. Avoid importing meanings for numbers from cultures (like ours) besides ancient Israel. Limited exceptions may be acceptable if they relate to neighboring countries that are party to a prophecy, like Egypt, Babylon (Iraq), Persia (Iran), Greece or Rome.
9. Check what other scholars have written. Our generation is not the first God has spoken to.
10. After reading what scholars say, check their work!

For example, many websites (with similar wording, indicating a common source) confidently assert that the number twenty-eight is associated with Jesus, because Jesus is the “Lamb of God” and the word lamb occurs twenty-eight times in the Bible. That would be wonderful – if it were true! Using Goodrick & Kohlenberger’s NIV Concordance, I discovered that the word lamb occurs 103 times in the English, 65 times in the Hebrew and 35 times in the Greek. I checked other translations for counts, including the ESV, HCSB, KJV, and NKJV. No twenty-eights.

Multiple Hebrew words are rendered as lamb in English, since they distinguish between male and female, blemished and spotless. The most common Hebrew word used for lamb in the Old Testament is used 34 times, and another 13 times. No match there.

What about the New Testament? The famous declaration by John the Baptist, “Behold the Lamb of God!” uses the Greek word ἀμνός (amnos). It occurs three times in the Bible. Three times a Greek pronoun is replaced with lamb; it wasn’t in the original. That leaves one more Greek word, ἀρνίον (arnion), which some scholars say means “little lamb” or even an affectionate “lambkin”. That word occurs twenty-eight times in the Bible, all in Revelation.

So the websites weren’t entirely wrong. However anyone doing a cursory check would conclude that statement is false, and discount everything else written on that site. One can associate Jesus with the number twenty-eight, but that association is weaker than the initial claim made it to be. We need to do better than that.

When we search for prophetic insights certain numbers pop up repeatedly. It is time for introductions. Let’s meet the numbers.