WHAT'S THE HYPE ABOUT GEMATRIA?

In learning Hebrew, we want to get right into the Word of God in its original language to see what it says. 

        Instead of learning the grammar, sometimes, it is easier to get into the gematria of things in Hebrew. And, the danger is when we start putting a number into everything including the Tetragrammaton -- the four letters of the Hebrew alphabet יהוה that even the Jews would not pronounce, what's more to assign a number to it and say the number 26 is the number of HaShem (His Name)! 

       A friend of mine asked his orthodox Jewish friend his views about gematria. This is what my friend sent me via whatsapp. It is slightly modified at the request of my friend:

"I managed to find out from my orthodox Jewish friend, who is from the priestly line. He knows what gammatria is. He doesn't use it. 

        "Long ago the Jews don't have the Roman numerals and they need numbers to do their accounting, to pay their debts etc. hence they stick a number to a letter so that they can do their accounting. It was mainly used as a mnemonic," my friend continued. 

       "An example given by him (my friend's orthodox Jewish friend) is that say, 'wine in' means 'secret out as a person who is drunk will tend to loosen his tongue'. So u use the numeral 70 to represent wine and secret so that a person remembers easier that `wine in means secret out.'" 

               A correction: Hebrew does have numbers. This is how we have words that describe one (אחד), two (שְׁנַיִם), three (שָׁלוֹשׁ) and the list goes on. However, like what our Jewish man explains to my friend, for convenience, the scholars later assigned a number to each alphabet. The gamatria never existed in the original text! When God reminded that the LORD their God אחד, He did not just write the letter aleph to denote it! The second day of creation was never assigned the gamatria represented by Beth. Period. 

        My friend then explained how things went out of context based on the input from his Jewish friend.

"Then quite a lot of Jewish sects crept out that used a bit of mysticism here and there many many years ago and his uncle had to try to get many Jewish people out of these sects. 

       "All these cropped up due to people having time on their hands and being bored and listening looking for new things to be interested in. It stopped a while due to people being busy and had to work hard for a living.

      "He suspects that due to covid-19 people have so much time on their hands due to lockdown or no jobs even if u want to work or govt helping out like in Oz that people are looking for something new to interest them."

       I have no personal contact with my friend's Jewish friend. All I did was to ask my friend to check with his orthodox Jewish friend since he said he is from the priestly line. I think his conclusion is precisely what Paul said about people who want to follow the way of the Torah, after they have been saved by grace. This is exactly what my friend wrote in his message:

"If u want to follow Judaism u follow all of it and not take bits and pieces out of it to suit u."

 In a subsequent post, my friend wrote:

"I like Maths and numbers but these don't interest me. People used numbering to even check the Jewish year and say this is a bad year of troubles etc. but I think Christians will do well to witness and serve the Lord by their deeds rather than dwelling into a good and bad year. We must live as if the Lord were to come now, nothing to be ashamed facing Him."

        My thoughts: "What is the difference then between such a teaching compared to say the fung shui masters who try to predict whether 5781 is a good year or not?" In an earlier post, I wrote: 

Now, let me mesmerize you.

Next year will be the year of tsade צ which has a gematria of 90. The word Tzaddiq צֶדֶק begins with צ; therefore, next year, 5781 will be a year where righteousness reigns. And if you plus all the digits in the year 5781 together, it is a total of 21. This number is just five short of the gematria of the Tetragrammaton, but it is getting closer to the number 26 -- what an illustration that, as the Day of the Lord approaches, the mouth of the righteous will become more visible.

Tzade has a gematria of 90. And if you take away the 0 from 90, you will get 9. When you deduct the number 9 from 90, you will get 81. Wow! And next year is the year 5781 in the Jewish calendar! Taking away the zero from 90, when is no one (or zero person) willing to speak up for righteousness, although the gematria of Tzade is supposed to be 90, the year 5781 will become a year of unrighteousness when people are not willing to speak up for righteousness.

Wow! What a warning for all of us in the year 5781.

        It is easy for one to try to read too much into gematria that they become more like the fung shui master ala Hebrew style. Even this Jewish website warns against gematria. 

        I remember many years ago, people used to pray against the demon behind everything including a toothache when they should go to the dentist and have it fixed. I just do not understand why people are so gullible as to believe in gamatria or that there is a demon behind the toothache. 

       Enough said about gematria. Long before gematria was introduced, there were already numbers used in the Tanakh. Gematria is basically assigning a number to each letter of the alphabet, for example, alef is one, beth is two, gimmel is three. Hence, we see Genesis 1 is read as Bereshit Alef. 

       I cannot find anywhere in the Tanakh that uses gematria as its numbering system. For example, in the shema Yis'rael, the word 'echad' is always used for One, not aleph. A quick cursory reading of Genesis chapter one will show us that God uses the numbers -- instead of the gematria-style numbering system -- to count the days when He created the world. This simple table shows some of the numbers used in the Bible. 

       No one will deny that there are some numbers that are repeatedly used in the Bible. These numbers are known as the Typological Numbers which are commonly used in biblical narratives (3, 7, 40, etc.). I have no problem with that. 

       But, that's what we can find in the Bible, not with what is taught as 'secrets' from the gematria that only now God reveals to His people. Let's not be too gullible to believe in such rubbish, but start reading the Word of God to see how plainly it speaks to us! Even the meaning of the parables that Jesus spoke has been made plain to us who believe in Him.

יין

     Let me give you an example with the word Yayin (wine). In gematria, the yod is assigned a number 10, and the nun is 50. Hence, the word Yayin (יין or wine) is 10+10+50 = 70. I am waiting for someone to tell me how that the number somehow represents the perfection of God. With some imagination, I am not surprised someone will say that, not until the zero is dropped, the wine cannot represent the perfection of God. For whatever reason that can be thought of, once zero is dropped, the digit 7 is left.  They will then link the wine to holiness by giving the rationale that even Jesus used it to represent His blood. This can be mesmerizing, but it's not from God's Word! When Jesus took up the cup and the bread, His main focus was to institute the Lord's Supper that we are to practise and as often as we do it, to remember what He had done on the Cross!

       We should, instead of wasting our life away teaching such a thing; instead, we should go back to the Word of God and dig deeper into it. Understanding its cultural, historical and social context of the Scriptures, the original languages used in the Old and New Testament, would help us to effectively exegete the Bible and make it relevant to our lives today. 

       Let us be warned against the subtracting or adding anything to God's Word, by mesmerizing ourselves and others within our circle of influence with some strange numbers including the number ascribed to the Holy Name of G-D, that we try to correlate with something else or like some use the gematria to even predict every new year. 

Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.  (Deuteronomy 4:2)

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll. (Revelations 22:18-19)

       God's Word is what it is intended to be:

"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16)