Numbers and symbols
The numbers and images the Bible uses to carry meaning, and what readers would have heard in them.
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Card 1 of 7
What does the number seven usually signify in the Bible?
Completeness or perfection, starting from the seven days of creation.
God rests on the seventh day, and the Sabbath follows the same pattern. Seven appears constantly in the laws and festivals, and Revelation is built around sevens: seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. When Jesus tells Peter to forgive not seven times but seventy times seven (or seventy-seven), he means without limit.
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Card 2 of 7
What does the number twelve usually signify in the Bible?
God's people as a whole, from the twelve tribes of Israel to the twelve apostles.
When Jesus chose twelve disciples, observers would have understood it as a claim to be rebuilding Israel. The new Jerusalem in Revelation has twelve gates named for the tribes and twelve foundations named for the apostles, joining the people of both testaments into one.
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Card 3 of 7
What does the number forty usually signify in the Bible?
A period of testing, trial, or preparation.
It rained forty days in the flood. Moses was on Mount Sinai forty days, Israel wandered forty years, Elijah travelled forty days to Mount Horeb, and Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness. Lent, the forty days before Easter, comes from this pattern.
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Card 4 of 7
What is the "number of the beast", 666, in Revelation?
The number given to the beast in Revelation 13, which John says is "the number of a man" and calls for wisdom to work out.
In Hebrew and Greek, letters doubled as numbers, so a name could be totalled. One widely held reading is that 666 is the total of "Nero Caesar" spelled in Hebrew letters, pointing to the emperor who persecuted Christians; some ancient manuscripts read 616, which matches another spelling of the same name. Others see it as a symbol of falling short: six, again and again, never reaching seven.
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Card 5 of 7
What is "Alpha and Omega"?
A title God and Jesus use of themselves in Revelation, from the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, meaning the beginning and the end.
The English equivalent would be "the A and the Z". It claims that God stands at the start and the finish of history and everything between is in his hands. The title is shared between God and Jesus, which is one of the ways Revelation places Jesus on the side of God.
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Card 6 of 7
What does the dove represent in the Bible?
Most importantly the Holy Spirit, which descended on Jesus like a dove at his baptism. It is also associated with peace from the story of Noah.
Noah sent out a dove, which returned with an olive leaf, a sign the flood was ending, which is where the dove with an olive branch as a symbol of peace comes from. At Jesus's baptism the Spirit descends like a dove over the water, echoing the Spirit hovering over the waters at creation.
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Card 7 of 7
What do the bread and wine of Communion represent?
Jesus's body and blood, given in his death, as he said at the Last Supper when he told his disciples to do this in remembrance of him.
The practice is called Communion, the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist, which means "thanksgiving". Christians agree that Jesus commanded it but differ over how he is present in it: Catholics and Orthodox believe the bread and wine truly become his body and blood, Lutherans that he is truly present in them, and many Protestants that they are signs and a memorial.