Meaning of Numbers in the Bible
What is Numerology and Gematria?

Biblical numerology is the study of how numbers are used in Scripture and, for the sake of our series, what their usage may reveal about God. For example, the number seven is consistently used to show what God considers complete and perfect (seven days of creation, God's seven spirits, etc.). Twelve is used to denote God's establishment of a foundation (e.g. twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles) or the perfection of his authority. Other numerals such as three, four and ten are also symbolic.

Gematria, which is a subset of numerology, is the search for hidden meanings based on the Hebrew letters in a word and their corresponding numerical representation.

A simple example of Gematria is the following. The Hebrew word for father, ab, is composed of the first two letters of the language's alphabet. The numeric value for each letter, 1 + 2, equals 3. The two letters in the word for mother, em, adds to 41 (1 + 40). Added together, both words equal 44. The sum of the letters in the Hebrew word for child (yaelaed) is also 44, showing that it takes the "sum" of a mother and father to create a child.

A Christian version of Gematria (which some label Biblical numerology) uses the Greek values of its letters to hunt for symbolism in words used in, and related to, the New Testament.

Biblical Hebrew with numbers

The numeric representation of each of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet is below. Hebrew contains twenty-two letters, with five of them taking on a slightly different shape if they are found at the end of a word (Hebrew is written right to left). These five exceptions are the letters final kof, final mem, final nun, final pe and final tsade.

Hebrew alphabet
with their numeric values