1-5 Number Nine and Jewish History

A notorious expression including the number nine in Hebrew for its remembrance of calamity is the ninth day of the fifth month Av. It is so widely known that instead of translated it is transliterated in many languages including English: ב א ב ת ש ע ה or Tisha b’Av. This is the date, it is believed, when the destruction of the first and the second Temples of the Lord had taken place. While the second destruction came to pass in AD 70, the first one happened in Biblical times. It is well documented both in the Prophets (2 Kings and the book of Jeremiah) and again, schematically, in the Writings (the last chapter of 2 Chronicles). Interestingly, this date is not mentioned in the Tanakh. A ninth day associated with a tragedy is indeed mentioned in 2 Kings 25:3,4 but it is in the fourth month, not in the fifth. The famine prevailed after a long siege and a breach was made in the city. It was about a month later but on the seventh day of the fifth month when Nebuzaradan, king Nebuchadnezzar’s representative, came to Jerusalem. Finally, in Jeremiah 52:12, it is written that the same person came to Jerusalem on the tenth day of the fifth month. In the latter case, however, his coming is directly and immediately associated with the destruction of Jerusalem (v. 13).

As it is seen, it can be concluded that the most dramatic events concerning the destruction itself indeed happened between the seventh and the tenth day. Perhaps the whole process of destruction took several days and it might be that the culmination of the event came to be on the ninth day of Av. The apparent discrepancy between the dates cited in 2 Kings and Jeremiah could be explained easily taking into account that for the ancients, personal appearance is equivalent to the presence of authorized representative. So, men appointed by Nebuzaradan may have come on the seventh day whilst he came personally on the tenth.

Be that as it may, the ninth day of the fifth month has remained in the Jewish historical memory as the darkest day of the year, when disasters have happened to the nation. And these disasters have been caused by Gentiles.[1] The last significant event happening on this was the signing of the “Final solution” by the Nazis in July 1942. The date happened to be Tisha b’Av 5701.

While contemplating on the significance of the number nine for Jews, I noticed it right in the column of the central term. It is there in its feminine, 3-letter form. I was intrigued. The occurrence of ת ש ע in the column containing already at least two tavs and two shins is not an extraordinary event. Even so, there are only two possibilities for it and one of them is materialized. The probability for such occurrence is about 7 %. I tried with all possible occurrences in the matrix and, as it should be expected, quite a number of coloured squares appeared. Therefore, I decided to look for a pattern. In order to eliminate the redundant occurrences, I concentrated on those occurrences, which would form a geometrically regular shape. So I tried to find all the horizontal, vertical and diagonal (without step) occurrences within a zoomed out matrix 90 columns wide that the Keys to the Bible program yields. The maximum skip I set for the search has been 11. It is by a unit larger than the maximum vertical skip for a 3-letter word in the matrix. The result is shown on Figure 10.

I was surprised to see a cluster distributed relatively evenly around the central column. Moreover, the number of the codes appeared to be … nine! I checked the maximum skip and it appeared to be 8. The next skip at which a new term – horizontal - appears in the matrix is 13 and it goes right through the central column again, sharing its shin and ayin with an old term! I checked for the overall number of horizontal, vertical and diagonal without steps occurrences of ת ש ע at skip of up to 8 in the retrieved text (That is, the whole Torah)[2]. It appeared to be 1613. The number of the columns of the cluster is 37, while the overall number of the columns of the retrieved text is, of course, 14965. So it turns out that 9/1613 = 0.558 % of all occurrences appear within the 37/14965 = 0.247 % of the whole area. Said otherwise, instead of the average rate of 4 occurrences, we have got 9 ones. I browsed through a collection of about 10 selected matrices and it happened only once when I numbered 9 occurrences within 37 columns or less. I expanded the matrix to the largest possible area that the size of the screen of my computer allows (114 columns) but there was only one more occurrence in the far left upper corner given that the column with 2006 is right in the centre. The picture didn’t change when I increased the skip to 13.

At this point I was also impressed of the symmetric absence of occurrences to the left and right of the cluster. While such empty areas were to be seen every now and then with skip up to 8, they are much more unusual with skip up to 13. These findings convinced me that number nine is hinted at in the matrix in more than one way and urged me to see if there is more encoded information associated with it.

I noticed that the horizontal term at skip -6 and the diagonal term at distance 1 (the true skip is 14966) to the right of the central column form a pair in a very small area: 3?15 = 45 letters. So I focused my attention on this area. And then I saw one more ת ש ע entirely within the rectangle at skip 14962. I magnified the scale and what I saw held my eyes staring at the letters. I saw three occurrences of ב א ב (BAV) again entirely in the rectangle. These findings are shown on Figure 11 (black and blue ovals, respectively). I enlarged the area of search and looked outside the rectangle for more terms associated with time. The time(s) should be linked to crucial events, most likely in the Jewish history, and to the time of the end.

I noticed two of the 20^th century years written in full in Hebrew: ה ת ש ה = 5705 = 1944/5 at skip -3; turquoise ovals, and ה ת ש ח = 5708 = 1947/8 at skip 4; green ovals. They are well known years associated with positive developments for the Jewish nation. The former year is the year of the ending of WWII and hence the end of the Holocaust and the latter is the year of the establishment of the State of Israel. Being intrigued, I tried for more years but surprisingly, I couldn’t find any more of the last century intersecting or close to the main term. I saw a year that is ahead, ה ת ש ע = 5770 = 2009/10 or even ה ת ש ע א = 5771 = 2010/11 at skip 14966; oval contours of the endmost letters, that goes through the rectangle and is close to the main term.

I checked the statistical evaluation for the occurrences of the horizontal terms only just in order to demonstrate the order of the odds (see Figures 12 and 12a). The order is about one in a million. I checked for the occurrences of all possible skips in the visible matrix of ת ש ע (purple letters in squares) and ב א ב (green letters in ovals) on Figure 13. As it could be expected, the matrix is full of coloured letters. However, I couldn’t find an area of the same value that contains so many encoded items. Only two letters among the 17 within the red rectangle are not letters of encoded word contained in it. I couldn’t find an area that contains even the same absolute density of letters.

The right spelling of Tisha b’Av is, of course, ב א ב ת ש ע ה . So a heh will be missing if we combine ע ש ת and ב א ב . I tried with ה ע ש ת but there were only two occurrences at diagonal skip with step in the 90 columns matrix with the main term in the centre. One of them, however, intersects the main term in Figure 11. And this occurrence widens the very dense group with only 6 columns. Also, it shares its tav with that of a ת א ה in the dense cluster. It is also very near to the horizontal occurrences of ב א ב in the same cluster. I checked the horizontal, vertical and diagonal occurrences of ב א ב in the matrix. It turned out that the two lowest horizontal occurrences and the lowest diagonal occurrence are those in the cluster. No vertical occurrence is nearby the main term.

The ninth of Ab requires the masculine form of the numeral, i.e. that with the heh in the end. This is according to the rules. However, I was surprised to learn about a peculiarity in Hebrew. It is not only characteristic of Hebrew but also of a number of Semitic languages including Arab. The fact is that, according to the rules, the numerals from three to ten possess inverse morphological form in respect to the noun [14]. There are only two genders in Hebrew – masculine and feminine. Even so, this rule has led to confusion in many people, especially those that are of lower education and who haven’t happened to know a foreign language. So untypical is the combination of ‘masculine’ numeral with a feminine noun and vice versa, that often some people try to ‘correct’ it. This sometimes leads to funny stories [15]. There is a tendency in the contemporary Israeli Hebrew towards gender neutralization [14]. It is possible that this tendency is due to a large extent to the ubiquitous usage of English – a Gentile language characterized by its neutral gender. This impression can be supported by the fact that this tendency is spread mostly among the young people [14]. Anyway, the fact of particular interest is that it is the feminine form of the numerals that occupies the ‘neutral’ place [14].

What relation could have this fact with our code? If we take for granted that ת ש ע prevails over ת ש ע ה in the matrix, as long as we keep in mind that the number relates to a day (masculine noun) of a month, we can suggest several conclusions. Firstly, the fact that the more significant occurrences of the number nine are in the feminine form may hint to the Latter Days because it reflects modern tendencies. The role of the Gentiles may have also been hinted at here. Secondly, it might be a pun. ת ש ע means 9 but because its Gematria value is 770, it is used also for the concise expression of years of the Hebrew calendar. In our case, it may hint at the year 5770, that is September 2009 to September 2010. Thirdly, it may mean that there will be no more tragic days for the Jews or at least no more of what have already happened to them on Tisha b’Av.

On the other hand, we cannot ignore the significance of the occurrence of ת ש ע ה intersecting the main term 2006 and the cluster occurrences of ב א ב in close proximity. In this case, the code may point out to the day Tisha b’Av in AD 2006 or 5770 or 5771. But it may define not a single date but a period of time. This period may start somewhere (on the ninth of Av?) in 2006 and end somewhere (on the ninth of Av?) in 2009/10 or 2010/11. This is more evidence that the Bible codes cannot be used as crystal glasses.

[1]There is an exception, however. It is believed that the spies sent by Moses to survey the Land returned and reported the bad news on this very day.

[2]What is called ‘skip’ in this case is actually ‘distance’ in its geometrical meaning. It is a true skip only in the case of horizontal occurrence.

Figure 10

Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 12a

Figure 13