Unbeknown to many people Hebrew numbers play a very important part in the Hebrew language. Unlike English, all the letters in the Hebrew aleph bet have a numerical value.

It is extremely important to know the whole aleph-bet to be able to use it as a tool for Hebrew numbers. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to follow biblical Hebrew texts.

Use of Hebrew letters for numbers

 Biblical Hebrew is interesting. Numbers have a representation of a letter. represented by letters. In the Torah, the chapters and the verses have letters representing them.

For example, the first verse is marked as an “aleph”. The second verse with a “beit”. Here is the interesting part. For verse number 12, it would “aleph-beit” . Note, it would be the actual letters, not written out in words like I am doing.

I have explained simple numbers, such as 1 and 2. It is important to know that as the numbers get higher, such as 40, or 50 and so on, the representation of the Hebrew numbers will change. As the numbers increase, so the letters change. For example, the number for 40 is the letter mem.

Why is 18 a lucky number in Jewish tradition?

According to Wikipedia, the Gematria is an alphanumeric code of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase based on its letters. Let us have a look at the work “khai”. This is made up of a kheit and a yod. The kheit has the numerical value of 8, and the yod has the numerical value of 10. This makes 18. In Hebrew khai also means “life”. Therefore people often give monetary gifts in denominations of 18, as it represents life and it is a lucky number.

Understanding Hebrew numbers

Hebrew numbers are complicated. The key to learning them is to learn the aleph beit from the beginning, it will start to make more sense. The first step is to learn the Hebrew letters through Easy Learn Hebrew. Only then, should you start exploring the Hebrew numbers and how they work. Note, this blog is merely an introduction, there is more material to explore if you have the passion.`