Four Is the Door to God's House

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 When we discussed the numbers 1, 2, and 3, we finished up each one with a brief discussion of the Hebrew letters used to express these numbers. This time, let’s start there instead, because it helps lay the foundation for what’s to come.

In Hebrew, you remember, each numeral is expressed by letters of the alphabet. The numeral 4 corresponds to the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, dalet ד.

In the ancient Hebrew pictograph writing, though, dalet was a picture of a door or tent flap: . The word dalet itself likewise means “door.”

As an aside, you may notice that the dalet pictograph resembles our English letter D. In fact, the English alphabet traces its roots from Latin back to Greek, from Greek to paleo-Hebrew, and from paleo-Hebrew to the early Hebrew pictographs. But that’s a topic for another day.

Returning to the main topic now, we see that the number 4 bears association to a door or the entrance to a dwelling. As we’ll see momentarily, it even pertains to the dwelling itself.


4: Earth, dwelling-place, sanctuary, creation

The dwelling of all mankind is this earth. It’s the home that God created for us. So on one hand, it makes sense that God’s Word associates the earth with the number 4, speaking in verses such as Isa. 11:12 of the four corners of the earth, but on the other hand it may not make sense to some. How can a circle, a globe, have four corners?

The answer is revealed to us when the Bible also speaks of the four winds of heaven, as it does in Jer. 49:36: “Against Elam I will bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and scatter them toward all those winds; there shall be no nations where the outcasts of Elam will not go.”

The four winds, or the four corners, are simply the four cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west.

Likewise, God’s servants will be gathered from the four winds at Yeshua/Jesus’ return. We read, “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Mat. 24:30-31).

At His return, He will also regather the people of Israel. Isa. 11:12 tells us, “He will set up a banner for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”

In addition, God will destroy four earthly kingdoms, as we learn in the Book of Daniel. In Dan. 7:1-8, the prophet saw a vision of four beasts representing four kingdoms, the last of which “was different from all the others, exceedingly dreadful” (Dan. 7:19). But Daniel then saw a vision of God’s judgment, and “watched till the beast was slain, and its body destroyed and given to the burning flame. As for the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away” (Dan. 7:11-12).

We find a parallel account in Zech. 1:18-21, where Zechariah saw a vision of four horns, likewise representing four kingdoms:

“Then I raised my eyes and looked, and there were four horns. And I said to the angel who talked with me, ‘What are these?’ So he answered me, ‘These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.’ Then the LORD showed me four craftsmen. And I said, ‘What are these coming to do?’ So he said, ‘These are the horns that scattered Judah, so that no one could lift up his head; but the craftsmen are coming to terrify them, to cast out the horns of the nations that lifted up their horn against the land of Judah to scatter it.’”

So the earth has four cardinal directions, which the Bible also calls winds or corners. Yeshua/Jesus will gather the elect from all over the earth, represented by the four winds. He will regather Israel from all over the earth, again represented by four winds or corners. He will destroy four earthly kingdoms.

On the fourth day of creation, God created the sun, moon, and stars (Gen. 1:14-19) to give light on the earth and to help us measure time (v. 14). Each year, we recognize four distinct seasons as the sunlight passes through four phases, marked by two solstices and two equinoxes — a total of four markers.

As God began to call the Gentiles into His congregation, He showed the Apostle Peter a vision of “a great sheet bound at the four corners… let down to the earth” (Acts 10:11). “In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth” (Acts 10:12). Peter recognized that the unclean animals represented the peoples of the earth, and that he “should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28).

Thus, many examples show us that the number 4 represents the earth, the dwelling of man. It also represents other dwellings.

God commanded the Israelites to camp on all four sides of His tabernacle: north, south, east, and west (Num. 2). Job’s ten children died when a powerful wind “struck the four corners of the house” where they were feasting (Job 1:18-19).

Ultimately, the dwelling which we strive to enter is God’s Kingdom, also called the “new heavens and new earth” or the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). This is the eternal home of God’s people, and it’s represented in the Book of Revelation as a city foursquare: “Its length, breadth, and height are equal” (Rev. 21:16).

Like the New Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies, representing God’s throne room, was a foursquare cube. In the tabernacle, it was ten cubits high, ten cubits wide, and ten cubits long, which can be deduced from Ex. 26. In Solomon’s temple, its dimensions are explicitly said to be 20×20×20 cubits (1 Kings 6:20). In Ezekiel’s temple, the Holy of Holies has the same dimensions as in Solomon’s temple (Ezek. 41:4).

Now, then, what represents God’s Kingdom for us today? The weekly Sabbath! The Sabbath, as we’ve seen previously from Heb. 4, represents God’s Kingdom, our eternal home with Him, our eternal Sabbath rest.

So, as a type of our eternal dwelling, it makes perfect sense that the Sabbath is the fourth commandment, or fourth statement, in Exodus 20. We’ll return to this thought before the end of this post.

In Mark 2:28 and Luke 6:5, we find this statement from Jesus Christ: “The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.” Therefore, Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, is tied to the fourth statement and the number 4.

Furthermore, as John 3:16-17 famously tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

As we’ve already seen, the world, the earth, the dwelling of man, is represented by the number 4. Again, we see the number 4 tied to Jesus, the Savior of the world. But we’re barely getting started!

Yeshua/Jesus came to earth roughly 4,000 years after the world’s creation, according to an examination of Bible chronology. 1 Pet. 1:20 tells us that this was planned “before the foundation of the world.”

He was crucified on the fourth day of the week, Wednesday, and resurrected near the end of the seventh day, the weekly Sabbath. This is the only way for the “three days and three nights” of Mat. 12:40 to be reconciled with the rest of the Scriptures.

As He died on the cross, we read, “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic” (John 19:23).

Jesus told us twice in the Gospel of John, “I am the door” (John 10:7, 9). Remember, as we saw at the beginning, the Hebrew letter dalet means “door,” and is the fourth letter of the alphabet. It was originally represented as a pictograph of a door, and is still used to express the numeral 4.

Jesus also tells us, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev. 3:20).

Jesus died on the fourteenth day of Nisan, as commonly accepted and also established in a previous post. In the Hebrew numeric system, the number 14 is expressed yud-dalet יד, or 10+4. As it happens, this also spells the Hebrew word yad, or hand, and, in ancient Hebrew pictographs, looked like this: . That forms a picture of a hand on a door. Yeshua/Jesus is the door, and His hands were pierced (Psa. 22:16; John 20:25, 27).

In addition, Jesus’ death fulfilled the Old Testament Passover sacrifice (1 Cor. 5:7), which also took place on Nisan 14 each year (Ex. 12:6). When the Israelites in Ex. 12:21-22 smeared the blood of the Passover lambs around the doors of their dwellings, that foreshadowed Christ, the door, shedding His blood for us.

In fact, all the Old Testament sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s death. We’re told in Heb. 9:11-14,

11 But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation.

12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh,

14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

All these sacrifices, foreshadowing Christ’s death, happened on a square altar with four corners and four horns on each corner (Ex. 27:2).

When King Solomon built the temple to replace the tabernacle, he laid its foundation in the fourth year of his reign (2 Chron. 3:2-3). Now who is the foundation? “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). And who is the temple? “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16).

So once again, we see the number 4 linked to Jesus’ death as the Savior of the world!

This brings us to another facet of the number 4, which is that of shelter or deliverance. The purpose of a dwelling is shelter from the elements. Jesus’ death and shed blood saved us, or sheltered us, from the death penalty for our sins, just as the death and blood of the Passover lambs sheltered the Israelites in their dwellings from the death angel (Ex. 12:23).

We see the number four used this way in other passages, as well. In Dan. 3:25, Daniel’s three friends were delivered from Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace by a fourth Man who appeared like the Son of God.

In 2 Kings 7, the city of Samaria was saved by four leprous men who discovered that the enemy army had fled. Fascinatingly, the Hebrew word for “leprous” (tsara; Strong’s # H6879) literally means, according to Gesenius, “to strike down, scourge.” That’s incredible, because we, too, have been saved by someone who was stricken and scourged: Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world!

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:4-5).

There’s one final piece of the number 4 that I’d like to look at, and it takes us back to the Sabbath. Here’s Ex. 20:8-11:

8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.

11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

God not only established the Sabbath at Creation, but He also reminded us of that fact in this fourth statement, the Sabbath statement.

So here we see the number 4 linked not only with the earth, dwellings, and shelter (or salvation), but also with God’s creation.

Through Jesus’ death, God makes us a new creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).

In the first resurrection, those whom God chooses to be His firstfruits will reach the completion of this new creation. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).

When does this happen? This passage, with its talk of trumpets, gives us a clue: it’s the Day of Trumpets, the fourth holy day listed in Lev. 23!

But we’re not done with this fourth holy day, the Day of Trumpets, yet.

On the fourth day of Creation, in Gen. 1:14-19, God created the sun, moon, and stars to “be for signs and seasons, and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14). In Hebrew, “seasons” is moedim (Strong’s # H4150) and is often used in reference to God’s holy days, as it is in Lev. 23:1: “The feasts [moedim] of the LORD, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts [moedim].”

Now, on God’s inspired calendar, the Hebrew calendar, all the holy days are calculated from the fourth, the Day of Trumpets! Not only that, but the Day of Trumpets is also the first day of the seventh month (Lev. 23:24), and thus, like the weekly Sabbath, it’s tied to both the number 4 and the number 7.

That wraps up this whole package for now. The number 4 tells such an incredible story! It’s the story of creation, of our salvation through Jesus Christ, and of our ultimate goal: the Kingdom of God.
Brett Gray is a 4th generation Sabbath-keeper and a member of the Body of Christ.

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