So, the other day, I got thinking about the number 18. It just sort of popped into my head, and I wondered, does this number mean anything specific in the Bible? You hear a lot about 7 or 12 or 40, but 18? Not so much, right? That got my curiosity going.
My first step was just to grab my Bible and a concordance. I figured I’d start there, see where the number 18 actually shows up. I spent a good chunk of time just flipping pages, looking for mentions of “eighteen”. It wasn’t jumping out at me everywhere, that’s for sure.
I did find a few spots, though. It wasn’t like it was completely absent. I noted down what I found:
Places I Spotted Eighteen
- There were those 18 years the Israelites served the king of Moab. That’s in Judges 3.
- Then later in Judges 10, it mentions another 18 years, this time the Philistines and Ammonites were giving the folks east of the Jordan a hard time.
- I also saw something about Abimelech having 70 sons, but it wasn’t 18 directly, so I wasn’t sure if that counted in the same way. Need to be careful not to just grab any number nearby.
- There was also that story in Luke 13 about the woman who was crippled for 18 years before Jesus healed her on the Sabbath. That one stuck with me.
- And Jesus mentioned the 18 people who died when the tower of Siloam fell, warning people to repent.
Okay, so I had these examples. What did they tell me? Honestly, my first impression was that 18 often seemed connected to periods of trouble, bondage, or suffering. You had oppression lasting 18 years, a woman crippled for 18 years. Even the Tower of Siloam reference involved 18 deaths. It felt a bit heavy, not exactly a cheerful number in these contexts.
Then I remembered hearing something about Hebrew meanings for numbers. I did a bit of digging around that idea – just looking through some notes and books I have. I came across the concept of Gematria, where letters have number values. The Hebrew word “Chai” (×—×™), which means “life,” apparently adds up to 18. That seemed like a total contrast to the Bible verses I’d found! Bondage on one hand, life on the other.
So, putting it all together… It wasn’t a simple “18 means X” situation. It felt more like the number showed up marking periods of difficulty or oppression in the Bible stories I found. But then there’s this separate tradition linking it strongly to “life”.
My takeaway from spending time on this? Numbers in the Bible are fascinating, but sometimes you have to look at the specific story and context. 18 showed up marking long periods of struggle, but those periods also ended, like with the woman being healed. So maybe it’s about endurance through hardship, leading eventually to release or, in that other tradition’s view, a connection to life itself. It wasn’t a straightforward search, but definitely interesting to trace the number through the scriptures and see where it led.
