Counting Hebrew Letters, Words, and Verses in Jewish Tradition
Counting Hebrew Letters, Words, and Verses in Jewish Tradition
Counting Hebrew Letters, Words, and Verses in Jewish Tradition
been clear indications that biblical writers did not write their
literary productions off the cuff, but composed them with
care, using a variety of compositional principles.
What has been said above about the symbolic function of the
structural numbers 7 and 22, applies here as well, but now
with regard to the affliction of the people and the passionate
expression of grief for them: the number 22 and its multiples
signify that the registers of lament are opened sevenfold, on
Masoretic verse level, twelvefold on verseline level, and seventy-
fold on word level.
Chapter 3 not only forms the mathematical center of the book
on the level of chapters: 1–2 + 3 + 4–5, but also on the level of
Masoretic verses: 44 + 66 + 44. Moreover, from the perspective
of content, chapter 3 constitutes the turning point in the book.
The mathematical center of this central chapter is to be found in
3:25–42, comprising six sets of three-line verses. Here the lead-
ing theme, already intimated in verses 19–24, is no longer
lament, but hope, self-examination, and conversion based upon
Yahweh’s mercy. This center can be delimited precisely. It starts
most significantly with a threefold use of the key word tob,
“good,” in verses 25, 26, and 27, and ends with a striking shift
from third to second person, addressing Yahweh directly, in
verse 42, as is also the case in the next section 3:43–45.
The Masoretes located the mathematical center of the book on
the level of verses between verses 33 and 34—in the Leningrad
Codex at the indentation at the beginning of verse 34. At this
point, not only the 18 verses of 3:25–42 but also chapter 3, with
16 NUMERICAL SECRETS OF THE BIBLE
its 66 verses, and the whole book, with its 154 verses, are all
divided into two equal halves:
18 = 9+9 verses, and 66 = 33+33 verses in the center,
and 154 = 77+77 in the book.
With the 18 Masoretic verses of 3:25–42 at the center of both
chapter 3 and the book as a whole, the entire text appears to
have a typical sevenfold structure in a menorah pattern, of which
I shall give many examples later:
1. 1:1–22 22 verses
2.
3.
4.
2:1–22
3:1–24
3:25–42
22 verses
24 verses } 68 (4x17) Masoretic verses
God to mend and restore his relationship with his people. The
acrostic clearly functions to stress the fact that Yahweh is still
Israel’s God, in spite of their apostasy. However, such acrostic
devices were used on a small scale, since they have been
detected in a limited number of instances only.14
Once again it should be stressed that such “coded mes-
sages” are very sparse in the Bible. In this respect, a stern
warning against Bible freaks using the computer to detect
supposed hidden predictions in the biblical text, is necessary
and appropriate. See my remarks in chapter 7 under the
heading “The Misuse of Numbers by Numerologists.”