Symbolic Numbers in the Bible

Genesis 35:10-26, Jacob had twelve sons ... (08/02/21)

One of our new fellow-readers joined because he always wondered why 12 was such an important number, and for the next three weeks we'll be looking at the reasons for that. Jacob had 12 sons, who gave rise to the 12 tribes of Israel. Consequently twelve is often used symbolically to represent the people of God. As we saw for 7, sometimes there are 12 of something because twelve is symbolic. And sometimes there just happen to be 12 items or persons under discussion.

Today's Translation Trivia: "Benoni" means "son of my sorrow"; Jacob changed his name to "Benjamin," which is "son of my right hand."

Genesis 49:1-28, Jacob had twelve sons, who gave rise to the twelve tribes of Israel... (08/03/21)

Jacob had 12 sons, and each of these sons gave rise to one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Verse 2 is a good example of the type of parallelism we often see in the Old Testament. Hear = listen. Jacob = Israel, because God changed Jacob's name to Israel. The sons of Jacob have Israel as their father. Whenever you see this sort of structure, remember that only one thing is being said, but it's being said twice.

On the other hand, sometimes two things are being said, but it's easy to miss the transition. For example, look at vss. 5-7. Verse 5 starts out by talking about the individuals Simeon and Levi, but by the time you hit vs. 7, Jacob has just about got to be talking about the tribes of Simeon and Levi, since he's going to scatter them in Jacob/Israel, which has now become a nation, not a person. When Paul (Romans 9:13) quotes Malachi 1:2-3 in quoting God as saying, "I loved Jacob and hated Esau," God, Malachi, and Paul are all talking about the nations founded by Jacob and Esau. Only if you know this method of naming and referring to tribes and nations can you keep this stuff straight in your mind. (And only if you know that loved/hated is an idiom that means loved-more/loved-less can you keep the rest of it straight!)

Numbers 7:1-3, 78-89, Jacob had twelve sons, who gave rise to the twelve tribes of Israel and many symbolic items that come in sets of twelve. (08/04/21)

John Wesley's comments on Numbers 7:1 that "It seems day is for time, and on the day, for about the time. For all the princes did not offer these things upon one and the same day, but on several days, as here it follows." As a matter of record, the princes of Israel came one per day, for twelve days. (They're all the same, so we're reading only one.) This means that the offerings brought were as follows:

Now you may be thinking, "Of course there are 12 of everything, because there are 12 tribes, each of which brought one of each item in vss. 4-77!" And you're right, but that doesn't explain why we then get a summary of the offerings, emphasizing that there were twelve of everything. Twelve sons, twelve tribes, twelve of everything. Twelve is important.

Joshua 4:1-24, Jacob had twelve sons, who gave rise to the twelve tribes of Israel and many symbolic items that come in sets of twelve. (08/05/21)

How many kinds of memorial stones can you think of? Gravestones, of course. Cornerstones. Obelisks. Stelae. Memorial walls, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The tradition of recording important events in stone is thousands of years old, as we see today. When the twelve tribes of Israel had crossed the Jordan on dry land, they marked the event with a memorial made of twelve stones taken from the river bed.

Notice vss. 12-13. When the children of Israel got to the east bank of the Jordan, two and a half tribes decided that they liked it there because it was good cattle country (Numbers 32). They asked Moses for permission to stay there instead of going over the Jordan to the promised land. Moses said, sure, you can have your inheritance here, but your fighting men must agree to be the shock troops when we cross the river. And that's what happened.

1 Kings 18:20-40, Jacob had twelve sons, who gave rise to the twelve tribes of Israel and many symbolic items that come in sets of twelve. (08/06/21)

When the prophet Elijah built an altar as part of his competition with the prophets of Baal, he naturally made it out of "twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob."

After the death of King Solomon, his son King Rehoboam promptly alienated the affections of the ten northern tribes, and the kingdom was divided. The reign of King Ahab, the 7th northern king, began about 56 years later (the northern kings kept getting assassinated). The people in the north made no bones about worshiping other gods, chief among whom was Baal of the Philistines. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest; they lost.

Matthew 10:1-20, Jesus appointed twelve apostles. (08/09/21)

There were many disciples, but Jesus chose only twelve of them to be apostles. Until this point, the twelve tribes of Israel were the whole people of God. Now, the twelve apostles are the nucleus for the expansion of the people of God to encompass – gasp! – non-Jews. The original meaning of apostle is one who is sent. So just as it is not a coincidence that Jesus chooses twelve, and not eleven or thirteen, of his disciples to be apostles, it's also not coincidence that the first thing he does after he calls and chooses apostles is to send them out. Jesus warns them that being an apostle is tough duty. It still is; be kind to your pastor, who has also been called and sent out.

Mark 9:30-41, 10:32-34, The apostles were commonly called "the twelve." (08/10/21)

When you were a little kid, did you learn the song, "There were 12 disciples Jesus called to help him ..." followed by a list of the twelve apostles? I've gained very few insights by reading the New Testament in Greek – chiefly that most translations are pretty accurate! – but one of them is the distinction between disciples, which means "students" and who were many, and apostles, which means "those sent" and who were originally twelve.* Admittedly sometimes, as in Mark 9:30, it looks like disciples may be referring to the twelve. Mark 10:22, on first reading, seems like both those who followed and the twelve refer to the same group, but on second reading, I think it looks more like a crowd following, of whom he took aside the twelve to teach privately. Anyway, a second insight I've gotten from the Greek is that Jesus was usually followed by an enormous crowd, and many of these were called disciples, but the in the Gospels, the apostles are always exactly twelve in number.

*A few more were added by the early Church.

John 6:51-71, The apostles were commonly called "the twelve." (08/11/21)

Notice the clear distinction here in vss. 59-67 between the "disciples," who are many, and "the twelve," who are twelve. Also notice in vs. 71 that Judas Iscariot isn't one of the ordinary disciples; he, too, is one of the twelve.

Yesterday I alluded to a few more apostles appointed by the early Church, and fellow-reader Charles J. wrote to ask why their names had been omitted. Their names weren't omitted from the Gospels – they just hadn't been sent anywhere yet. The twelve are the apostles appointed by Jesus, and they are all named in both Matthew 10 and Luke 6. Matthias was appointed by the early Church to take the place of Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:26); we're going to read about him in a day or two. Others are Paul, of course (e.g., Romans 1:1, Galatians 1:1); Barnabas (Acts 14:14); James the brother of the Lord (Galatians 1:19); and Andronicus and Junia (Romans 16:19). There are other verses that sound to me like they may be talking about other, unspecified apostles, but it's hard to tell. Remember that apostle means one sent; only later did it come to be synonymous in our minds with the twelve appointed and sent by Jesus.

Luke 9:1-17, The apostles were commonly called "the twelve." (08/12/21)

Here again we see "the twelve," the apostolos/apostles, being apostello/sent. What may be the same group is also called "the disciples" in vss. 14 and 16; I say "may be" because it's usually assumed to be the twelve, but (a) that's more than 400 people/apostle being served, and (b) there were many disciples in the crowd who weren't apostles, and they might have helped. Always think about what is usually assumed. Anyway, after everyone had eaten, they gathered up twelve baskets of leftovers. This banquet for 5,000 men, plus women and children (Matthew 14:21), is the only miracle reported in all four Gospels.

John 20:19-29, Even after Judas is gone, they are called "the twelve." (08/13/21)

I'm currently reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which is a locked room mystery. It was so usual to refer to the apostles as "the twelve" that even after Judas has gone away, Thomas is called "one of the twelve." Is that from force of habit, an anachronism, or just a convenient way of saying "all the apostles who were left after Judas's defection"? Hard to tell. Another thing that's hard to tell is whether the twelve, who are now eleven, were the only disciples in the locked room when Jesus came to them, since both terms are used. Jesus is sending them, so maybe it's just the apostles; I think that's what is generally assumed, but the key word is "assumed." Read Mark 16:14 ff. and Luke 24:33 ff. (where it's clearly more than just 12, now 11) and see you what you think. I guess I'm currently reading two locked-room mysteries.

Acts 1:9-26, So there had to be twelve! (08/16/21)

We saw last week that even after Judas is gone, the apostles are called "the twelve," so there had to be twelve! After Jesus' ascension, Peter announces that they need to choose a replacement for Judas. I find two things especially interesting about this passage. First, I don't see why the quotation from Psalm 69:25, "May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it," means that you have to replace Judas. It looks to me more like an argument for not replacing Judas, even after reading the whole psalm. If you figure this out, let me know.

Second, in vss. 21-23, they are looking for another disciple who has been around for the entirety of Jesus' ministry – from his baptism to his resurrection. And they had more than one choice! They put forward two, but they had so little trouble finding two in a room of 120 people that I wonder if there might have been more than just these two. Anyway, Matthias is chosen to be an apostle. We never hear of him again in the New Testament, but there are several ancient, mutually exclusive, traditions about what became of him.

James 1:1-17, All the people of God are members of "the twelve tribes." (08/17/21)

After the death of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the twelve sons of Jacob gave rise to "the twelve tribes," which at that time constituted the whole people of God. When the long-awaited Messiah came, he naturally started with twelve apostles. Now we learn from James that the fledgling Church considered itself to be the spiritual descendant of the twelve tribes. Twelve is used as a symbol for "the whole people of God."

Revelation 12:1-6; 21:10-21; 22:1-2, John's vision of heaven includes many sets of 12 and multiples of twelve. (08/18/21)

The original name of Revelation is "Apocalypse of John"; apokalupsis is Greek for revelation. Apocalyptic writing is always full of symbols, and one of the symbols we see in Revelation is, of course, twelve. The woman with twelve stars in her crown represents the Jewish nation, that is, the people of God. The city with twelve gates is the ultimate home of the people of God, and the tree with twelve kinds of fruit for the healing of the nations shows that the people of God who enter there will include not only the Jews but "the nations," which throughout the Bible means "those who are not Jewish."

Or not. There are as many interpretations of the symbols in Revelation as there are interpreters. If you don't like my reading of the gates and the tree, that's okay. I think there is substantial agreement, however, that the woman is the Jewish nation, and twelve represents the people of God.

1 Kings 16:15-28; 2 Kings 21:1-18, Sometimes twelve is just 12. (08/19/21)

There's nothing special about 12 years, so when the text says that Omri reigned for twelve years or that Manasseh came to the throne at the age of twelve, we can assume that twelve means 12. King Omri's sins are not enumerated, other than continuing in the sin of Jeroboam. (Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, had set up idolatrous shrines at Dan and Bethel.) Manasseh, a much later king of Jerusalem, was probably worse, at least in our eyes. Among other sins, he profaned the Temple with idols and practiced child sacrifice and necromancy. God had had enough.

Acts 24:1-21, Sometimes twelve is just 12. (08/20/21)

Twelve days is just 12 days. Notice that the World English Bible omits vs. 7 and the first half of vs. 8, as do many other modern translations. The manuscripts available to translators change over the centuries as archaeologists and other scholars find older and more complete texts. The oldest and best manuscripts currently available do not have this verse and a half. Don't fret: I've never seen such an inclusion or omission that even seems to modify God's plan for salvation.

More Symbolic Numbers
Perfect Sevens
Twelve Tribes
A Lot of Forties

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