"One out of every five Scriptures in the Bible contains a number. Numbers are important to having a working knowledge of the Bible." --Ed F. Vallowe, Keys to Scripture Numerics
Numbers play an important role in the
Bible. The
spiritual signifigance of numbers is very obvious when reading through any of the books. Here are a few of the signifigant numbers in scripture:
One
One, or
protoss in
Greek, is the number of
God and the
divine.
Two
Two is the number of
difference or
unity, depending on the context. If two people agree on a matter then it is true. In other cases, two divides. On the second day of
creation, God divided the earth from the sky.
Three
Three,
tritos in Greek, is the number of divine completeness. God is made of three parts -
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. On the third day of creation the foundation of the earth was finished. Three is also the number of
ressurection and
redemption, because on the
third day after
Christ was crucified he rose from the dead.
Four
Four,
tessares in Greek, represents the earth and man.
Five
Five denotes God's
grace since it is 4+1, or the combination of man and God.
Six
Six is number of
humanity. Man was created on the sixth day of creation, so therefore this number is his mark. In the Bible men who are linked with going against the power of God, such as
Goliath,
Nebuchadnezzar, or the
Antichrist, are associated with this number. Six is also one less than seven.
Seven
Seven is the number of spiritual
perfection. God completed creating the earth on the seventh day. There are many examples of the number seven being used to represent completeness in scripture.
Nine
Nine is used to show divine
retribution or
judgement. It is the product of divine completeness (3*3).
Twelve
Twelve represents the
church or
government perfection. Jacob had twelve sons who became the
twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus had the
twelve disciples, and the tree of life in the book of
Revelation has twelve different types of fruit.
It is interesting to note that spiritual perfection (7) is achieved by combining God and man (3+4). Likewise, getting the product of 3 and 4 gives 12 - or a divine authority. The number of man (6) is one less than perfection. In other words, man tries to attain perfection but falls short without God (6+1=7).
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Sources:
http://members.tripod.com/~HarveP/sig-numbers.html
http://www.cezwright.com/books/numbers.htm