The Symbolical Numbers of Scripture Author:Malcolm White Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE NUMBER THREE AND A HALF. In passing from those passages in the Old Testament where the number Three and a Half occurs, to the fuller discu... more »ssion of those in the New, in which the same symbol is employed, it will be necessary to consider whether it bears any reference to the well-known number Seven, of which it is the half. We do not conceive that such a line of inquiry is at all in opposition to anything that has been urged. We mean still to indicate that the historical basis from which all the passages proceed, is the Three and a Half Years, drought in the days of Elijah. But the further question remains, May not that period have been fixed by God, in accordance with its relation to the number Seven—a number so sacred in Israel ? Without allowing ourselves meanwhile to launch out into the general subject of Symbolical Numbers, it may be enough to go upon the understanding, that, in the Apocalypse at least, the numbers are, many of them, if not all, of a symbolical nature. Who imagines, for example, that there will be exactly 144,000 sealed of all the tribes of the children of Israel,—12,000 of Judah, and 12,000 of Reuben, and so forth ? Or who supposes that there will beprecisely 144,000 virgins, who will stand hereafter with the Lamb on Mount Sion? Nay; we seek a symbolical significance for the number Twelve. And this is no way hard to find; for the 12 foundations of the New Jerusalem, with the names of the 12 Apostles engraved thereon, and the 12 pearly gates, bearing the names of the 12 tribes of Israel, and the measure of the city, 12,000 furlongs, and of its wall, 12 X 12 cubits, all convey the idea that 12, for some reason or other, symbolizes the church of the Redeemed. Hence the 12 times 12,000 denote apparently the universal company of the Eansomed....« less