Gematria in the Hebrew Bible

Gematria, the application of numerical values to letters (and larger units) has served historically as an important tool for interpreting the Torah and was and is widely used in Jewish religious literature.¹ The word is derived from Greek, probably from the word γεωμέτρικόσ (“geometrical”).² Whether the authors of the Hebrew Bible recognized and exploited these values constitutes a long-standing dispute which modern scholars have generally denied, based on the assumption that alphabetic numerals were not used in Hebrew texts until the Hellenistic period.³ Yet, the Hebrew Bible offers intriguing evidence that numerical values were assigned to Hebrew letters in ancient Israel.

Admittedly, biblical numerology, the general term for applying mystical or hidden meanings to numbers, is wildly speculative; adherents throughout history have willy-nilly applied numerical values to every element of a text. Controls are necessary to distinguish between plausible examples from those which are arbitrary and unconvincing. In the material cited below, speculation regarding gematria in the Hebrew Bible is divided into two categories. First is what I call “overt” gematria, where both the lexical unit (name or word to be deciphered) and the number are evident in the text, albeit sometimes in latent form. The second form I call “secret” gematria,⁴ where the essential number is nowhere evident in the text until one counts lexical units defined by the “counter.” While examples of “secret” gematria in most cases seem arbitrary and unpersuasive, the few instances of “overt” gematria present evidence that ancient Israelites applied — albeit rarely — numerical value to letters.

Writing Numbers in Ancient Israel: How and When?

According to the available evidence, Iron Age Israelites used several methods for writing numbers. Inscriptional evidence shows that Israelites expressed specific quantities with number words and Egyptian hieratic numerals; number words are more common in monumental inscriptions while hieratic is typical of ostraca.⁵ From the Persian Period on, Phoenician-Aramaic number signs dominate.⁶ The Hebrew Bible records only the use of number words for expressing quantity. However, societies can use different systems concurrently. Currently in the West, we read numbers using both Roman and Arabic numerals, as well as number words. Stephen Lieberman thus asserts, “No cogent argument against the use of the alphabet to write numbers can then be based on the employment of other numerals,”⁷ that is, number words or hieratic or Phoenician number signs.

As noted above, scholars date the introduction of gematria for Hebrew to the Hellenistic Period and assume that it was adopted by Hebrew authors from Greek usage. Since both the Hebrew and Greek alphabets are derived from the Phoenician, the Greeks would seem to be innovators in this regard,⁸ however available inscriptional evidence is inconclusive. The earliest evidence for the use of Greek letters as numbers dates to the end of the 4th century BCE. Coins from the reign of Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus (286-246 BCE) use Greek alphabetic numeration, along with a marriage contract from Elephantine dated to 310 BCE.⁹

As for the earliest use of Semitic (as opposed to Greek) letters for numbers, Ifrah cites coins and seals from the Hasmonean period. The coins were struck in 78 BCE (during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus).¹⁰ A seal bearing the words, “Jonathan the High Priest Jerusalem,” has a mem, which might indicate that it dates to the fortieth year from the beginning of Simon Maccabee’s reign in 142 BCE, so 103 BCE. Ifrah notes that, “if this were so, this seal . . . would constitute the oldest known document showing the use of Hebrew alphabetic numerals.”¹¹ Frank Moore Cross describes an earlier text, from approximately 312 BCE, a sherd from Idalion, a city in Cyprus, which has a Phoenician inscription.¹² Cross calls this example “the earliest extant evidence” for the use of alphabet as numbers by Phoenician or West Semitic scribes. If Cross is correct, there is little to no chronological gap between the earliest extant Greek and Semitic examples of alphabetic numerals.

Other factors might have erroneously influenced the scholarly assumption that the Semites borrowed alphabetic numerals from the Greeks. First, circular reasoning may play a role. If scholars assume that letters were not utilized as numbers in early epigraphic evidence, when letters are found on inscriptions from an earlier period, they can easily be dismissed as “artisans’ marks” when perhaps they function as numbers.¹³ Further, the common name for the practice, “gematria,” suggests its Greek origin. However, Stephen Lieberman comments that, “We seem to be dealing with things which acquired a (new) name, but that does not mean that they only came to be used after they had been provided with Greek terminology.”¹⁴

Numerical Values and Cuneiform Texts

First, it is important to emphasize that gematria is based on the order of the letters in an alphabet, which has a small number of symbols, generally less than 30, in a fixed order. Ifrah attributes the important role that letters play in numbering systems to their fixed order.¹⁵ Thus, alef has the value of 1 and bet is two; after tet (=9), the letters stand for tens until qof through tav, which represents the hundreds.¹⁶ In contrast, Egypt and Mesopotamia employed writing systems with hundreds of signs with little in the way of a fixed order.¹⁷ As a result, we cannot expect to find a system in Mesopotamia closely analogous to an alphabetic gematria, yet examples of sophisticated methods of number symbolism in cuneiform texts are extant. The most famous (yet cryptic) example is the statement of Assyrian king Sargon II (722-705 BCE) that he made the circumference of the wall of Khorsabad 16,283 cubits to correspond to the “number of his name.”¹⁸ Divine names in Akkadian were assigned numerical equivalents: Sin, the moon god, was given 30, perhaps because it is a close approximation of the number of days in a lunar month. Anu, the god of heaven, was given 60, the number of perfection in the sexagesimal system.¹⁹ Considering that cuneiform scribal schools were found in the West (Canaan, Egypt) in the second millennium BCE,²⁰ we can assume that Israelite scribes would be aware of numerical values ascribed to non-numerical symbols and vice-versa.

Alphabetic Numerals in Ancient Greek

The Greek system of alphabetic numerals uses the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet, along with three obsolete letters. Of these twenty-seven, five were added to the original Phoenician alphabet of twenty-two letters to better reflect the Greek language. The three obsolete letters (digamma or Semitic vav; koppa or Semitic quph; san or samekh) were carried over from the Phoenician alphabet; they were not useful to represent Greek phonemes (distinct sounds) and were retained only for use as numerical symbols. Thus, digamma was used for 6, koppa for 90, and san for 900.²¹ If the Greeks were the innovators regarding the use of letters as numbers, why would they preserve letters that were no longer useful? It is more likely that they already had numerical values when they were borrowed. Skehan writes that it is more likely that the Greeks found the Semitic alphabet already being used as numbers when they borrowed it in the 8th century BCE rather than assigning numerical values to letters that were already obsolete for use in Greek.²² Thus, several lines of reasoning suggest that ancient Israelites were familiar with the numerical use of alphabetic symbols.

“Overt” Gematria in the Hebrew Bible

The examples in this section offer both the number and the corresponding alphabetic unit (letter or name), in contrast to “secret” gematria in the next section.

Genesis 14:14 reads: And Abram heard that his kinsman was taken captive, and he marshaled his retainers, natives of his household, three hundred and eighteen of them, and gave chase up to Dan. The number 318 strikes the reader as enigmatic because it is not a typical biblical number, i.e., a multiple of 7, 10, or 12, and therefore invites speculation. Rashi and his Talmudic predecessors speculate that the number 318 refers solely to Eliezer (Abraham’s majordomo mentioned in Gen. 15:2), as indicated by the numerical value of his name.²³ Not all premodern exegetes agree with this interpretation; a notable dissident is Abraham Ibn Ezra.²⁴ It is interesting to note that the name of Abraham’s servant does not reappear in Genesis 24, where his quest for Isaac’s bride is the focus of the chapter. Rather, it appears only in chapter 15, just twelve verses after the number 318 in chapter 14. Perhaps this represents one of the several “catchwords” that link Genesis 14 and 15, but admittedly it is more nuanced than the others.²⁵ More recently, Gevirtz called attention to another aspect of the number 318, as the sum of all twelve prime numbers between 7 and 49, numbers that play an outstanding role in the Hebrew Bible.²⁶ Perhaps both suggestions have validity.

The personal and tribal name Gad is composed of two letters, gimel and dalet; according to conventional numerical values, their sum is 7. The first appearance of the name is found in Genesis 30:11, with the birth of Gad to Zilpah, the handmaid of Leah, who explains his name with the Hebrew bagad. The Masoretic text makes a ktiv/qere distinction here, with the latter splitting the three letters into two words, ba’ gad (“gad has come”), but either way gad is understood as “luck” or “good fortune.”²⁷ Thus, Leah, who has temporarily stopped bearing, greets the first son of her handmaid as a positive omen. The term gad in this sense appears again in Isaiah 65:11, where postexilic Judeans offer food and drink to Gad, a deity (or spirit) of “fortune,” and Meni, a god of fate.²⁸ Maier suggests that both represent “relatively late personifications” of the abstract concepts, luck and fate. The same word means “luck” or “fortune” in other Semitic languages, such as Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic, but this could be the product of the same numerological associations or cultural borrowing.²⁹

Certainly, the fact that the sum of the two letters gimel (3) and dalet (4) is 7 is relevant to its association with good fortune. Other biblical names include this element: Gaddi (Num. 13:11); Gadi (II Kgs. 15:14); Gaddiel (Num. 13:10).³⁰ The association of Gad with the number seven is evident in several texts: Gad is the seventh son of Jacob (Gen. 30:11); Gad has seven sons and, as a tribe, seven clans (Gen. 46:15, Num. 26:15-18); one of Gad’s “sons” is named Sheva (“seven”; I Chron. 5:13). Thus, the connection between Gad and seven, the most important symbolic number in the Hebrew Bible, is evident.³¹ Further, the association between the number seven and good fortune is demonstrated not only by its many occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, but also by the assortment of names in the Bible which contain the element sheva’: Batsheva in II Samuel 11; Elisheva in Exodus 6:23; Sheva, son of Bichri, in II Samuel 20; Gad’s son Sheva; the place-name Beersheva in Genesis 21:31, 26:33.³² Parents may utilize these names perhaps because the child is the seventh-born, but more so because it expresses their hopes for good fortune. In the case of Leah’s naming of Gad, perhaps both are true.³³ It is worthy of note that if Gad does indeed reflect the use of letters as numbers, the mention of Gad in the Mesha Stela would fix the date for Hebrew letters-as-numbers to the 9th century BCE.

The Sabbath commandment in Exodus’ Decalogue begins with zakor, and thus the Hebrew letter zayin, the seventh letter of the alphabet. Seven, as zayin, is thus the commandment’s initial symbol and the essence of its contents. Further, the Sabbath commandment is the seventh verse of the Decalogue, with v. 1 serving as the introduction.³⁴ Note that Deuteronomy’s version of the Decalogue uses the more conventional verb shamor (“observe”; 5:12).³⁵

The letter heh is associated with the number five. Exodus 9:1-4 describes the plague of cattle disease, the 5th plague. Exodus 9:3 states that the Lord’s hand is about to be on the Egyptian livestock (note the mention of “hand” with its five fingers; no other plague is described as the “hand of the Lord”).³⁵ There are also five objects in v. 3 after the general livestock in the field: horses, donkeys, camels, large cattle, and small cattle. The unusual verb hoyah, with its two hehs, also calls to mind the number 5; indeed, six of the thirteen letters in the phrase are hehs.³⁶

The five-part division of the Torah may be based upon the association of the Tetragrammaton with the number five. After all, the prevalence of seven as the number of completion and holiness would suggest that there should be seven books in the Torah, not five! Admittedly, nowhere are the five books of the Torah mentioned in the Hebrew Bible; rather, references to the Torah’s five-fold structure date to the last few centuries BCE. The identification of the letter heh with Israel’s God (YHWH) may be based on the inclusion of two hehs in God’s name, or because it is the first letter of HaShem, literally “the Name,” a circumlocution for the Tetragrammaton that appears twice in the Torah and is common in Mishnaic Hebrew.³⁷ The division of the Torah into separate scrolls/books could certainly have taken several different forms. The fact that the Torah is composed of five volumes suggests that we should look for a unique quality for this number; thus, the link of five with the Tetragrammaton as the explanatory factor should be considered.

Other instances of gematria in the Hebrew Bible have been suggested but are not well-rooted in the text.³⁸

“Secret” Gematria in the Hebrew Bible

Modern scholars have found evidence for gematria in the Hebrew Bible based on their counting of generations, letters, words, hemistiches, verses, and other units. The sum of units within a context specified by the scholar is thought to equal a number significant for its word-value. In its most complex form, this approach is associated with Jacob Bazak, Israel Knohl, Duane Christensen, and Casper Labuschagne. Placing this kind of inquiry in an historical context, Labuschagne notes that the Hebrew word for scribe, sopher, also means “enumerator” or “counter,” and the class of sopherim — the teachers and guardians of the canonical text of the Bible who counted its verses, words, and letters — were thus able to preserve its numerical “secrets.”³⁹ Note, however, that the units considered by some moderns go beyond the letters, words, and verses counted by the Masoretic scribes, and further, that the numbers important in this kind of analysis are “secret numbers,” i.e., numbers that are not explicitly stated but are evident only when units in the text are counted. Further, these scholars have pre-determined assumptions regarding the desired totals. These factors raise concern that often their conclusions are illusory.

Admittedly, there are examples of counting elements in a text which are worthy of mention because they can hardly be random. As mentioned above, seven is the most important symbolic number in the Hebrew Bible, and it is therefore not surprising that key words appear seven times (or multiples thereof) in many Torah texts. The best example of this is found in the seven-day narrative of creation, where, for example, the word elohim (“God”) is found thirty-five times and eretz (“land”) twenty-one times; Genesis 1:1 contains seven words and twenty-eight letters, and tov (“good”) appears seven times. However, in this case, the number 7 is not “secret” but rather serves as the structural framework of creation; the number is mentioned three times in Genesis 2:2-3. In contrast, Genesis 12:2-3 enumerates God’s seven-fold blessings in return for Abraham’s obedience, but the number seven is nowhere mentioned.

Two other examples of intriguing “secret” gematria are based on the numerical value of the Tetragrammaton, which is 26: Moses, to whom the divine name YHWH is first revealed, lived in the 26th generation from Adam;⁴⁰ Noah’s son Shem (“name”) has 26 descendants (Gen. 10:21-31). Counting names and generations in the Torah can offer meaningful lessons, and so differ from the analyses surveyed below.⁴¹

Labuschagne’s monograph Numerical Secrets of the Bible: Introduction to Biblical Arithmology outlines the discovery of a “hitherto unrecognized principle of composition: the use of specific numbers in the organization and formation of the text of the canonical books of the Bible.”⁴² He calls this kind of biblical analysis “logotechnical analysis,” which he believes should be applied in modern scholarship as supplemental to literary or form criticism.⁴³ He rejects any insinuation that his discoveries are associated with Kabbalah, mysticism, or magic, but rather sees the “numerical secrets” that he uncovered as a purely technical device used to imbue the text with depth and symbolic significance.⁴⁴ Most of his analysis focuses on the various ways that the Tetragrammaton is woven into the fabric of the Bible in units composed of 17 and 26 (and their multiples) words or letters. In addition to the conventional association of the Tetragrammaton with 26, Labuschagne derives the significance of the number 17 from the expression of God’s name as ehyeh, which he calls “the normal first person singular form of the supposed archaized form” YHWH, which adds up to 17.⁴⁵ He writes that 26 also represents the numerical value of the Hebrew kavod, “glory,” a term “also signifying his Presence,” but he ignores the vav to arrive at this conclusion.⁴⁶ Labuschagne may be correct in the role of 17 as a number with special significance, but it is not clear that we can pin that on its association with the Tetragrammaton or its archaized form.⁴⁷ Propp suggests rather that ehyeh may simply be a pun or even an evasion of God’s name.⁴⁸

Labuschagne attributes the general rejection of logotechnical analysis to his technique’s emphasis on the final form of the text, as opposed to the diachronic analysis that dominated Bible scholarship in the twentieth century.⁴⁹ However, a close examination of Labuschagne’s analysis suggests several shortcomings. First there is the issue of probability. The average verse in the Hebrew Bible has about 14 words,⁵⁰ so that there is a very good chance that any particular verse may have 17 words or any two verses 26 words. For example, Labuschagne notes that Exodus 20 has 26 verses, but that the Ten Commandments has 17 verses, which he sees as a deliberate means to infuse the text with symbolic meaning. On the other hand, Exodus 18 and 19, both of which are distinctive literary units, have 27 and 25 verses respectively, thus 26 is not an unusual or surprising number.

Israel Knohl expands on the work of Labuschagne and adds an explanatory dimension for the absence of alphabetic numbers in Hebrew prior to the Hellenistic period. He speculates that using letters as numbers was a “sacred secret knowledge that was kept in closed circles” and thus not in common use before the Hellenistic period.⁵¹ Knohl focuses on poetry rather than prose, so that in addition to counting words, he also considers the number of cola or hemistiches important for his reconstruction of “sophisticated creations by priests or scribes who had precise numerical models in mind.” He focuses on the same numbers as did Labuschagne, 17, 26, and their multiples, which are linked to the name of God.⁵² Regarding Psalm 92, Knohl’s analysis is more compelling: he writes that v. 9 comprises the center of the psalm, with 52 (26 x 2) words (seven verses) both before and after this focal point.

Jacob Bazak limits his numerological study of biblical texts to the book of Psalms. He suggests that the Psalmist utilized numerological devices to highlight a phrase of central importance.⁵³ He believes this technique to be operative in Psalm 23, for example, which has 26 words before and 26 after the central verse, for you are with me. Psalm 136, with its 26-fold repetition of For His Grace is forever, offers another example.

Duane Christensen’s “logoprosodic” analysis of biblical texts is the most detailed and speculative of these theories. Like Labuschagne, he emphasizes the significance of the “four primary compositional numbers (17, 23, 26, and 32) in the numerical composition of the Tanakh.”⁵⁴ The numbers 23 and 32 are associated with God’s “glory,” kavod: the traditional gematria for kavod is 32 (20+2+6+4), but another system understanding kaf as 11 makes kavod 23 (11+2+6+4). Critics have found his method “arbitrary,” in the sense that the desired result determines which words are counted.⁵⁵

The most vociferous response to the methodology of the four scholars mentioned above was penned by the Israeli scholar Meir Bar-Ilan, in his article “Back to the Middle Ages: Secret Numbers in the Hebrew Bible.”⁵⁶ Bar-Ilan makes a sharp distinction between numbers explicitly found in the text and those which are absent but then “discovered” in the text by the exegete. He notes that regarding the Torah, the Masoretes counted units but only for strictly utilitarian purposes: to preserve the text, to allow the scribe to plan his need for parchment, and to determine the price of the scroll.⁵⁷ The major fault he finds with approaches that introduce the number into the text is that they completely disregard the element of coincidence or probability, and thus he terms them a “false science.”

Conclusion

Several factors suggest that Israelites applied numerical values to the Semitic alphabet during the period of the Israelite monarchy, centuries before the Hellenistic period. Ascribing number values to signs was common in cuneiform literature, while evidence from the history of the Greek alphabet suggests that Semites were the innovators regarding numeric values, rather than the Greeks. Evidence from the Hebrew Bible strengthens the case for the use of alphabetic numerals, especially regarding Gad, the seventh son of Jacob whose very name means seven. On the other hand, the evidence for “secret” gematria, that is, the counting of literary units so that they equal the numerical value of words expressing God’s presence, is compelling in cases but in others can be judged as coincidental and arbitrary.