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During my student days at Penn, I liked math – calculus and especially statistics. But head over to Wharton to take a class or two on accounting? What good was that ever going to do me? I suppose it goes to show that we don’t know everything at 18.
Fortunately, while I no longer possess the math skills I once did, I still do enjoy working with numbers. And there is a very Jewish take on numbers, called gematria. The way gematria works is that you assign each Hebrew letter a numerical value – one for aleph, two for bet, and so on. And if you add up the numerical value of the word, sometimes you uncover a coded message, according to the Sages. So let’s take an example from this week’s portion, Chayei Sarah.
When Abraham seeks to purchase a burial cave for Sarah, he approaches the owner, Ephron the Hittite, for a price. Ephron demurs – take it, he insists. After a bit of back and forth, he comments, “Land worth four hundred shekels – what’s that between you and me?” (Genesis 23:15). Now, is Ephron being sincere about his willingness to give Abraham the land, or is he coyly suggesting the price?
Let’s take a look at the gematria of Ephron - עפרן. The ayin has a numerical value of 70; the pay has a value of eighty; the resh has a value of 200; and the nun has a value of fifty. Add them up and you’ll see that the total value is four hundred – precisely the sum of money casually mentioned by Ephron.
We can see from the following verses that Abraham gets the hint, and he weighs out the four hundred shekels at the going merchants’ rate.
Now, can we always take gematria seriously? No, I don’t believe we can. But once in a while I would say that the numbers do add up.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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