Glossary

Certain numbers seem to appear in almost every book of the Bible, repeated like the refrain of a song. In Pharaoh’s dream in the story of Joseph (Genesis 41:1–7), there are seven fat and sleek cows, seven ugly and thin cows, seven years of grain plump and good, and seven years thin and blighted. In the Book of Numbers, sacrificial offerings and sanctified times are regularly numbered seven (for example, 23:1, 28:11, 28:24, 29:12). Twelve and 40 are similarly popular. Is this repetition simply a coincidence, or are these numbers—known to scholars as “typological numbers”—somehow special?