Vav - Man and Cosmos
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a
great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,
and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as
a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the
heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island
were moved out of their places.
The Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)
The cosmic disturbance of heaven and earth catalyzed by the breaking of the Sixth
Seal of the Apocalypse reiterates one of the most strongly emphasized numerical teachings
of Scripture: the full creation of the Cosmos, culminating in Adam,
occurred in Six Days.
The question of whether these were six literal days, six aeons, or six parabolic days is utterly
irrelevant to this study. Regardless of what stance one takes on this matter, after all the
arguments have been uttered and the dust finally settles, one truth remains: Scripture explicitly
relates the ideas of Man, Cosmos, and
the Number Six. This teaching spans
the entire Biblical revelation, from the Creation Holograph of Genesis
1.1 to the Sixth Seal of the Book of Revelation.
Beginning in Genesis 1.31 we read:
And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.
And there was evening and there was morning, the Sixth Day. Thus the heavens and the earth were
completed, and all the hosts of them.
The Sixth Day (Genesis 1:31)
In the Septuagint, the last phrase is translated as "and the whole cosmos of them."
Cosmos occurs frequently in the New Testament, usually translated as
world. Its relation to the concept of heaven and earth
is exemplified in Acts 17:24:
The God who made the world [Cosmos], and all the things in it, since He is Lord of
heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands ...
Acts 17:24
In its broadest sense, cosmos denotes the entire physical universe,
both heaven and earth, as distinguished from the idea of just the earth, which is called
η γη (He' Gai, The Earth ). Thus we have the Cosmos
as the combination of the Four Directions, or corners of the earth, plus
the "two ends of heaven", that is, the Two Directions, Up and Down:
The Cosmos therefore is intrinsically sixfold. The mystery of God is then seen in the intrinsic relation
between the Hebrew word for= Six (used in Genesis 1 with reference to the Sixth Day) and the
Greek word for the Cosmos completed on the Sixth Day:
World
Cosmos |
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= 600 = |
Six
Shaysh |
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Shaysh (Six) is the root of the word used in Genesis 1.31 above.
The most obvious property of this pair of identities is its self-reflectivity; the Number uniting the
words Six and Cosmos is simply the Number Six on a higher scale. The scaling factor, the Number Ten,
is the basis of both the Decimal Number System and the numeric structure of the Alphabets, as detailed
in the Alphabet Table . In the Algebra of God's Word,
the Number Ten functions much
like a magnifying glass. Multiplication by Ten does not so much alter, as amplify the meaning.
It is frequently found in the transform from Hebrew to Greek and in the fulfillment of prophecies,
as discussed in Multiples of Ten .
The Bible speaks of two, and only two, universal Judgments: the Flood of Noah and the Final Judgment
marked by the opening of the Sixth Seal of the Apocalypse. It is in this context that the the
Number 600 makes its Biblical debut:
And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
Genesis 7:6
God ensured that we not mistake this for a "mere coincidence" nor as an inexact
"round figure" by reiterating it with additional detail in verse 11:
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day
of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the
windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
Genesis 7:11
This verse also presents the debut of the Number 40, the Standard Value of the letter Mem. Thus both
the Standard Value (40) and the Sofit Value (600) of the letter
Mem, which means Water, make their debut
together and in conjunction with the Flood of Noah. Such is the Wisdom of God.
These are the only verses in the Book of Genesis that mention the Number 600.
The reason for the Flood is given in Genesis 6.5-7:
And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ...
And the LORD said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the
earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air;
for I am sorry that I have made them."
Genesis 6.5-7
It is one thing for the Creator to destroy His creation, but quite another for humans to do so,
and the prohibition against the unjust Destruction of Man is given in the Sixth Commandment:
Thou shalt not murder. This is, of course, naturally polar to the Creation of Man on the Sixth Day.
The link between Man and the Number Six is nailed down in Revelation 13.18 where the Number
Six, in its triply redundant form (666) is called the Number of Man. Thus we understand the Law
of God given in Numbers 35.6,15:
Now among the cities which you shall give to the Levites, you shall appoint six cities of
refuge, to which a manslayer may flee. ... These six cities shall be for refuge for the children of
Israel, for the stranger, and for the sojourner among them, that anyone who kills a person
accidentally may flee there.
Numbers 35.6,15
What may have seemed to have been randomly scattered throughout the Bible is now seen to
be carefully gathered under one Numerical Category, and the intrinsic harmony of the Sixth
Day, the Sixth Seal, the Sixth Commandment, and the use of the Numbers Six and Six Hundred is
beginning to emerge. The only other appearance of the Number 600 in the entire Torah (first Five Books of the Bible),
is found in the Book of Exodus when Pharaoh chased Israel as they fled towards the Red Sea:
And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: and the heart of Pharaoh
and of his servants was turned against the people, and they said,
"Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?" And he made ready
his chariot, and took his people with him: And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all
the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them.
Ex 14.5-7
In a casual reading of Scripture, when the full significance of Number is yet to be
understood, one could easily pass over this verse with little more than a slight perplexity
as to why the Holy Author should choose to specify six hundred chariots over and
above "all the chariots of Egypt." They are not mentioned again; it is a seemingly redundant,
meaningless detail. But with the Key in hand, the Symbolic Door opens at a touch and we step out under a
sky where such minutia are revealed as precisely placed stars shining in the Heaven of God's Word, care
fully set to guide us through the incredible mystery of the Holy Bible, and home to His glorious Kingdom.
Chariots represent Power, and so Six Hundred Chariots represent the Power of the Cosmos,
which is, of course, the traditional symbolic interpretation of Egypt, the House of
Bondage. And what happened to these chariots? In precise analogy with Noah's Flood, they
were destroyed in the depths of the Red Sea. The New Testament identifies both of these events
as symbols of Baptism, and Baptism represents the death of Christ that freed us from being
in bondage under the elements of the world [cosmos]
(Gal 4.3). This is the universal bondage empowered by sin, as Jesus declared,
"Whoever commits sin is a servant of sin" (John 8.34). All who have not been redeemed by the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ are subject to it, for "all have sinned and come short of the glory
of God" (Rom 3.23).
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