If you think that God is not interested in numbers then I have news for you. The evidence says that God loves statistics. In this blog I will look at that evidence through the Bible’s use of two numbers – hundreds and thousands.
The Bible is full of numbers – from the seven days of creation to the seven bowls of plagues in Revelation. That stands in contrast to the scriptures of other faiths where numbers, especially hundreds and thousands, are much less significant. The God of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is interested in facts, albeit theological facts, and those are demonstrated through numbers. Numbers have a variety of types of significance in the bible, as this series of blogs is intended to show. In this particular blog I want to look at the numbers which are most specific to statistics, hundreds and thousands.
When we count people, for example in church statistics, we want to count in hundreds and thousands, because size matters, scale matters. Values in hundreds and thousands show large scale significance, as opposed to ones and tens. The bible uses these two numbers frequently, mainly for lengths of time and numbers of people. In both cases the numbers seem to be used to establish truth, authenticity. It is the same reason that politicians use numbers. But the numbers also establish scale – the sheer size of something.
Hundred and thousand are significant words in the Bible. Thousand appears over 550 times, Hundred appears almost 700 times. These are more than any other numbers, and more than most words. For scale, the word God appears around 2200 times. (All counts from http://bible.oremus.org/ ) Interesting then, that those words should be omitted from my main printed concordance! It seems that it is theologians, not God, who are not interested in numbers.
It is interesting to look where these numbers are used. They appear in the Old Testament mainly in the books of Moses and the history books (Joshua to Esther). Mostly the books of poetry and the prophets are not interested in numbers, but Daniel and Ezekiel are interested in numbers particularly within their powerful visions. In the New Testament references to hundreds and thousands are occasional. The book of Revelation on its own is the majority user of thousand, both for the numbers of people and years.
The most clear of these numberings in the Old Testament is the frequent use of the numbering of peoples, particularly the Israelites. We learn how many of them there are at various times in their history. We learn how many are in each tribe. Particularly we see this in the book of Numbers, where a census at each end of the book establish how God has cared for Israel. 603,000 go into the 40 years of wondering, 601,000 come out at the end. We see how many warriors are in the various armies that go out to fight, and how many survive in each army. Theological truths are being established with these statistics, particularly the ability of God to bless his people… or not.
There is a theological truth being established when we read that Adam lived for 930 years, but that after the flood the days of man would be one hundred and twenty years – later reduced to three score and twenty. Ages and eras are marked in thousands of years in Revelation – showing the scale of God’s vision for the time to come.
So God loves statistics. God is able to cope with large numbers in a way that many humans cannot. God is not just using these numbers to demonstrate authenticity and scale or to establish theological truths. Large numbers matter to God because each component number often represents a person who God knows and loves. One of the great miracles inherent in God’s being is God’s ability to know and relate to humans individually. This is not just to the hundreds and thousands of individuals in the biblical narratives, but to the millions and billions of modern human statistics. Only those who appreciate the significance of large numbers recognise what a miracle that is.
