Hebrew numerals

Amsterdam synagogue clock, 18th century. Instead of Roman or Arabic numerals, it employs Hebrew characters in accordance with their numerical value.

The Hebrew numeral system is a quasi-decimal alphabetic system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

In this system there is no notation for 0 and the numerical values of each individual letter are added together. Each unit (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) is assigned a separate letter, each ten (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90) and each hundred (100, 200, 300, 400) are equally assigned with separate letters. Gematria (Jewish numerology) generally makes extensive use of this numbering system, although its practically exclusive use today and one of the oldest has been to facilitate the study of Jewish study texts, such as the Torah or the Talmud..

Table of values and symbols

Particularities

Hebrew numeration associates a numerical value with each letter. There is not only an expression of quantity but a geometric construction and this duality is applied in different aspects: religious and even in "sacred geometry", a quadratic geometry with mystical and philosophical meaning, which, like any current of thought, has its supporters as well as its opponents. However, the most common use of the Hebrew numbering system can be found in the study of the books of the Jewish liturgy, such as the Torah (also called the Pentateuch, it corresponds to the first five books of the Christian Old Testament), the rest of the Tanaj (that is, the books of the Prophets and books such as: the book of Esther, the Song of Songs, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Psalms, the Proverbs and the book of Ruth, among others) the Talmud (masterpiece of Jewish legislation, in which all the legal aspects that have remained without adequate explanation in the Torah are interpreted in detail, in addition to recounting the process of creation of the Talmud itself), the Midrashim (explanations of the text that "supply the silences of the story", which is characterized by being subject to a metaphorical and less literal interpretation) and other comments.

Double meaning of the system

The Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two consonants, so the basic numeral system goes up to the fourth hundred. But the Hebrew consonant sounds are 28. The Hebrews did not resort to 28 letters but used only the 22 known and represented the other sounds by including a point (called Dagesh) within six consonants. When the point is not written the consonant has a "soft" sound; or fricative and in the other case a "strong" or occlusive. The fact of having preserved 22 consonants has an explanation: the letters of the alphabet are also related to regular polygons whose number of sides exactly divides the 360 degrees of the circumference. Thus 'á-lef not only symbolizes the number 1, but also represents an equilateral triangle, behth is associated with a square, gi-mel with the pentagon, in short. The number 360 has 24 positive integer divisors, but the 1 and 2 do not correspond to the number of sides of regular polygons. In this way, 22 numbers remain that are associated with the consonants of the alphabet, meaning polygons. There is a total parallelism with the Phoenician alphabet.

Use of double meaning in religious and ancient texts

For arithmetic use, the numerical correspondence is the one indicated by the table; but in sacred texts the same letter can mean two different numbers. When a text gives the material, earthly, human or concrete meaning, the number used is the one that corresponds to the geometric figures. If the meaning is spiritual, figurative, symbolic or heavenly, the number of the arithmetic system is used, as indicated in the table. As an explanatory example we can cite the ten plagues suffered by Egypt in Exodus and the seven plagues of Revelation or Apocalypse. The possible association of both numbers, if one wanted to make an ambivalent study, with the letter zá-yin, the numerical seven and the regular decagon, would indicate that the first plagues were literal and that those of the book of Revelation are in a figurative sense, that its description should not be taken literally but rather as a metaphor or allegory of facts similar to those descriptions. It is worth clarifying that Revelation was written in Greek, because at that time it was the commercial language in the Mediterranean basin and it was spoken by people of different nationalities, something similar to the use of English today. In addition, there were Greek-speaking Jewish settlements outside of Israel. However, the writer of the original version was probably a Hebrew and the symbolism retains the use of his own language, even though the script is Greek.

Exceptions

Another particularity that can be found consists in the changed writing of the numbers 15 and 16. They should be written 10 + 5 and 10 + 6, respectively, but the Hebrews consider writing 9 + 6 and 9 + 7 instead. This results of a measure against the possibility of infringing the biblical mandate not to use the name of God in vain, so as not to use a Name that has a certain degree of sanctity in something as trivial as the same numbers that could be used for something so everyday and little significant, such as trade. The name of God is represented in Hebrew by four consonants, the Tetragrammaton, that is: Yohdh-he'-waw-he'. The numerical value of yohdh is 10 and that of he' is 5, while waw is 6; but the expressions Yohdh-he' and Yohdh-waw are abbreviations for the Divine Name and are exchanged for the sums mentioned above. If we look at the geometric meaning, yohdh is an eighteen-sided polygon, he' corresponds to an octagon and waw to a enneagon.

Current state

Although the system has been simplified in modern times, in the analysis or reading of sacred texts or existing very old documents, an interpretation of the numerical meaning of the letters is not so automatic. The Hebrew number system, originally, was closely linked to religious content. The practice of writing 15 and 16 as 9 + 6 and 9 + 7 persists.