What are the odds that numbers rule the
universe? Pythagoras, the famous Greek mathematician, and his
followers turned numbers into deities. Others throughout history
saw that God made numbers. But, they said, He left the rest
up to us. We are the manipulators of numbers. Still some went
farther to suggest God Himself is a mathematician, considering
all the mathematical design in the universe. Though more intricate
and sophisticated today, scientific advancements still have
their feet in mathematics. What is the connection between God,
His creation, and math?
The Bible emphasizes numbers an awful lot. In fact, for an
ethical work, it seems overly stuffed with numerical significance.
Genesis opens with an exaggerated counting of the days of creation.
This multiplies the power of that narrative. After the seven
days of the week, that number pops up in numerous places. The
holidays of Passover and Succot are seven days. The sabbatical
year of rest to the land is seven years. Seven weeks are counted
between Passover and Shavuot. The list goes on, and commentaries
say that seven is symbolic of the natural cycle of creation.
Although each occurrence of a seven has a different message,
the theme that runs through them all is a cycle or completeness
in the physical realm.
Eight, one more than seven, symbolizes the elevation of the
physical to the spiritual. That’s why circumcision was
commanded to be performed on the eighth day, as that commandment
expresses the dedication of the physical desires to a spiritual
end. The number ten stands out from the Ten Commandments, ten
plagues in Egypt, ten statements of creation, etc. There are
many other obviously symbolic numbers scattered through the
five books of Moses like twelve, forty, and seventy. The Oral
Tradition brings out the significance of other numbers like
248, 365, and 613. And in Kabbalah a mystical significance is
given to numbers like 3, 7, 12, and 231.
Children learn about the specialness of numbers from an early
age, and even sing a song on Passover night highlighting the
meaning of the numbers one through thirteen. Sages needed a
very sophisticated and highly accurate understanding of math
for commandments like the calculation of the new moon, and setting
the calendar. So we see that math is not merely an incidental
aspect of His creation, but a major cog in the wheel of God’s
instruction manual.
Even more amazing is the assertion of the Talmudic tradition
that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet function also as a mathematical
code. Each letter stands for a number, each word a sum of those
numbers. This code is called - Gematria. When words are reduced
to numbers, correlations are drawn, based on words or sentences
with the same sum, revealing hidden insights into particular
passages. For instance, in Genesis 14:14 it says that Abraham
took 318 disciples with him to save his nephew Lot. His main
disciple was Eliezer, whose name in mathematical code equals
318. From this the sages derive that Abraham took only Eliezer,
who was equivalent to that many people. This offers another
nuance of meaning to that passage. God constricted layers and
layers of lessons in the text this way.
The standard code of Gematria is to assign the first ten letters
of the alpha bet the numbers one through ten, the eleventh letter
is twenty, the twelth – thirty, and so on up to one hundred,
and the last three letters are two, three, and four hundred.
There are other codes that assign different values to the letters,
some of which are amazingly complex, especially considering
the early time periods in which they were used. Some of these
seem impossible to work with without a calculator. All these
systems are a window to worlds of insights to be seen in the
stories of the Bible. As the sages say, “There are seventy
facets to the Bible.” (Seventy is symbolic of the numbers
of types of mentalities found in mankind. That’s why there
are seventy sages on the Sanhedrin, and seventy nations listed
at the dispersion after the Tower of Babel.)
The messages from God don’t stop with the Bible, though;
they also come from nature and the scientific examination of
the physical world. Mathematics, therefore, is not just a handy
way of dealing with scientific information. It is an avenue
of thought and insight into the Bible, God’s blueprint
of the universe. And being God’s blueprint, we find numerical
significance evident in His creation. In other words, there
is mathematical precision in nature because there is mathematical
significance in the Bible. Maybe with time (relative or not),
the ones examining the universe will realize the simplicity
of the Oneness in the vast complexity of it all.
