Seven is the perfect cycle, the week of divine accomplishments. In its highest form, nothing can succeed it:its Sabbath is an unbroken eternity,- perfect rest because God's rest (Heb. 3:4). In lower forms, however, it may be succeeded by other cycles, and hence the significance of the number 8.
The eighth day is the first of the new week, which it contrasts thus with the old one passed away. Thus the eighth psalm gives the " world to come" of Hebrews ii, with Christ as Son of Man over it; while the hundred and nineteenth psalm, with its twenty-two groups of eight verses each, gives the law written on Israel's heart, according to the terms of the new covenant.
Nine has, so far as I am aware, no other significance than what it obtains as a multiple of 3 by 3, an intensifying of its meaning. It illustrates the truth that as to the larger numbers they derive their meaning generally from the smaller ones of which they are compounded:forty, for instance, is simply a 4 by 10, as twelve is a 4 by 3.
The number ten, too, seems to fall under this rule. As in the ten commandments of the law it is the measure and mark of responsibility toward God. This is the effect upon man of all divine testimony:and as 5 is the human number, so 10 is 5 by 2. Judgment too is measured by responsibility. Thus ten times Pharaoh hardens his heart, and ten times God in judgment hardens it, while ten plagues fall upon the land in recompense.
Eleven I have at present no light upon, but twelve I have already stated to be 3 by 4. It is the number of divine government, although it may be administered by man. Twelve apostles to regulate in the kingdom of heaven, with twelve corresponding thrones when the Son of Man takes His throne. Twelve gates and foundations for the metropolitan city, New Jerusalem; twelve tribes correspondingly of the royal people upon the earth. The numbers that make up 12 are 3 and 4, the divine and world number, as are those that make up 7. If the one is 4 by 3, the other is 4 plus 3. In both it is thus divine acting in the sphere of the world, but in the former case more directly than in the latter. In this, faith recognizes the divine hand surely working out its own purposes, but in the meanwhile the world goes on, and there is until the close no outward transformation of it; in the former, there is a direct manifest work and transformation. The one traces the steps of secret government; the other, of open and publicly recognized authority.
This closes the regular series of symbolical numbers, so far at least as I have been able to follow it. There remains but one number mote, of which we may fitly speak.
Forty is the well-known number or measure of perfect probation; and here again the numbers of which it is compounded speak for themselves. It is plainly 4 by 10:the latter, the measure of responsibility to God; the former, the sign of the testing of man in the world; the product of these two, the perfect probation of man in the full measure of his responsibility. Such was the character of Israel's forty years' sojourn in the wilderness; of the Lord's forty days' temptation; of Esau's forty years which ended with his marriage with two Canaanitish wives, and the loss of the firstborn's place and blessing.
These, then, are the numbers. Their significance will be emphasized by their application. And in all this, I am only glad to say, there is nothing very new; what is so, is mainly in the extension of principles admitted by many to a new field, where indeed, however, the application should be easy and indeed necessary, if only it be once seen that numbers have this significance. In the hundred and nineteenth psalm we have just seen how plainly significant is the number 8 which is to be found, not in its text, but in its structure. A more familiar case for many will be found in the division of the seven parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13:Here, the first four are spoken in the presence of the multitude, and give the public aspect, while the last three, spoken to the" disciples in the house, give the internal and spiritual side, the divine meaning understood by faith alone. Here the numbers are found again in the structure, and are clearly significant.
Instances are to be found on every page of Scripture, but I need not now dwell upon what we are so shortly to have fully before us. I only assert emphatically here that the whole structure of the Word, and of every part of it, is as really governed by the significance of numbers as is the hundred and nineteenth psalm. These alphabetic acrostics are only encouragements to look further and more deeply to find every where what, if less obvious, is as really there; and being there, has its power and blessing in the design of God's love toward us, which surely we cannot and would not slight, and will not without loss. But before we proceed with this, I would notice some other examples of the way in which numbers are used by . Him. We can adduce, if I mistake not, chronology also in proof of this; and here I again quote what I have said elsewhere.
According to the common reckoning in our Bibles, Christ was born into the world in the four thousandth year of it. There has been much contention about the date, as is well known, and it will be instructive to examine it according to already established principles. For forty centuries, then, the world's probation lasted (for that was the character of those ages at the end of which He came, and whose history is found in the books of the Old Covenant), and forty we have already seen to be the sign of complete probation.
But whence the other factor?-whence the century? Let us only consider that Isaac was a type of the true child of promise, and then we shall easily remember that his birth took place when Abraham's body was "now dead, when he was about a hundred years old;" and God left him to this that Isaac might not be "born after the flesh" The flesh in Abraham had its probation for that hundred years; and when in the issue of this it was seen as dead, the power of God brought life out of death in the birth of Isaac. How significant and easily applicable to One greater far! born in the fortieth century of the world's probation, when all flesh was seen as dead, and in the power of God new life began in Christ.
Take as another instance from chronology the important period of Daniel's seventy weeks. They are weeks of divine working to accomplish blessing,-" to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sin, and to bring in everlasting righteous-ness." Here, seventy sevens remind us of the steadfast, if secret, working out of divine counsels.
This is emphasized by the double use of 7; while the 10, the other factor in the number, reminds us that we have here also responsible man, with the sins, alas! which come so surely from him.
This is the character of the whole period; but the separate parts are no less strongly marked. The first portion, of seven weeks, or seven sevens, is thus marked as one in which divine energy is working in a high degree; and if one will but glance at the margin of his common Bible, he will find that "from the going forth of the commandment to rebuild and restore Jerusalem," in Nehemiah ii, (B. C. 445,) forty-nine years will bring us to B. C. 396; and turning to Malachi, Israel's last Old-Testament prophet, he will find 397 B. C. as the date of his prophecy. Thus these seven sevens cover the time of prophetic ministry in Israel till its close. "
The sixty-two weeks that follow are symbolically silent; but the silence is itself significant. It is a time of expectation for Messiah. Inspired history and prophecy lapse together. The deepest of the night precedes the dawn; but even that dawn is not yet for Israel. Messiah comes, and is cut off.
The last week again tells us, in its simple seven, of divine power once more at work; but the week is violently broken in upon and interrupted. Opposition to God is at its height, spite of which the divinely determined time runs on to its conclusion, and the divine purpose is consummated at the close of the seventy weeks.
Take still one instance from the types, which gives remarkable meaning to the silence of Scripture. In the twelfth of Exodus the beginning of the year is changed, the passover being the foundation of every thing for Israel, as for us the blood of redemption, of Christ our passover.
But the month does not begin with the passover itself. It is not till the tenth day that the lamb is taken, and then it is kept up for four, when on the fourteenth day at even it is slain. Here, 14 is 2 by 7; it is the number which speaks of the perfection of divine work, multiplied by that which speaks of testimony:the blood of the lamb is indeed the witness of the precious work upon which all depends for us.
But what, then, of the ten days silently passed over, and the four of keeping up? The first speaks of responsibility, and applies to the time as to which a very similar silence is preserved in the gospels, at the close of which the Lord comes forward to be proclaimed by the Father's voice as the object of His delight. This testimony comes at the close of His private life, in which He has been fulfilling, as man, His individual responsibility. Therefore the silence up to this, and the seal put upon Him now; while from this point He begins His testing (as the four gospels show it) as the appointed Sacrifice and Saviour. He begins this, therefore, with His forty days' temptation by the devil. At the close of this whole period He is offered.
Thus the types, the structure, and the chronology of Scripture all unite to insist upon the significance of numbers. We must yet look more particularly at what is closely connected with this -the place of the books of Moses, the Pentateuch, in relation to the other books; but this will of necessity lead us into the heart of our subject.