The Number Seven in Scripture

The significance of the number seven in the bible

It is significant that the number seven, which stands for completeness, would be repeated in so many significant ways. I will divide this into two parts:

Part I – The significance of the number seven,  in Genesis 1:1, as discovered by Ivan Panin –

The first thing to notice about the first verse in the Bible is that the middle word has no translation. It is a significant word all by itself, which has no actual translation, but is made up of the aleph and the tav, the first and last words of the Hebrew alphabet – significant because, in Revelation 1:8, Jesus says “I am the Aleph and Tav, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty”. Actually most English Bibles translate this as the “Alpha and Omega”, since they are based on the Greek language, though it is more likely at the time of John’s vision in Revelation, Jesus would have been speaking Hebrew since they were both Jews.

The number of Hebrew words in Genesis 1:1 = 7.

The number of letters = 28 (7 x 4).

The first three (of seven) Hebrew words translated “in the beginning God created” contain 14 letters (7 x 2).

The last four (of seven) Hebrew words translated “the heavens and the earth” have 14 letters (7 x 2).

The fourth and fifth words have 7 letters.

The sixth and seventh words have 7 letters.

The three key words (God, heaven, and earth) have 14 letters.

The number of letters in the remaining four words is also 14.

The shortest word in the verse happens to sit in the middle of the verse.

The Hebrew numeric value of the first, middle, and last letters is 133 (7 x 19).

The Hebrew numeric value of the first and last letters of all seven words is 1393 (7 x 199).

Professors at Harvard University attempted to disprove this numerical find as proof of divine authorship by trying to duplicate the feat using the English language and arbitrary number assignment to each letter of the English alphabet. They had at their disposal over 400,000 English words, as compared to 4,500 words available in biblical Hebrew. Despite this advantage, and the advantage of being able to arbitrarily assign numerical values, they were not able to duplicate the feat of 30 mathematical multiples of seven as found in Genesis 1:1.

Read more about it here.

 

Part II – A few further examples of the significance of the number seven in scripture.

The phrase “The Lord of Hosts” is repeated 70 times in the King James bible.

The phrase “His servants the prophets” is repeated 7 times in the Bible (2 Kings 17:23; 21:10; 24:2; Jeremiah 25:4; Daniel 9:10; Amos 3:7; and Revelation 10:7).

The Ten Commandments are written in the 70th chapter of the Bible, Exodus 20.

The first miracle of Jesus occurs in the 70th chapter of the New Testament, John 2.

In the genealogy of Jesus given in Matthew, which tracks from Abraham to Jesus, 42 (6 x 7) generations are listed.

In the genealogy of Jesus given in Luke, which tracks from Adam to Jesus, 77 (7 x 11) generations are listed.

There are hundreds of examples of numeric values that defy coincidence. One resource to visit is here.