Let's Explore the Number 7!

 If you perform a search on BlueLetterBible.org, you’ll find that God’s Word mentions the words “seven” or “seventh” nearly 600 times! Naturally, we don’t have time or space to cover each of those mentions today. Nevertheless, the number 7 remains one of the most important and most fascinating numbers in Scripture.

As we’ve observed several times before, there’s no filler in God’s Word. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). If God tells us a number, He has good reasons for doing so. Whoever neglects numbers is missing out on an amazing part of Scripture.

So what is God telling us through the number 7? It actually portrays several things in Scripture, and we find them at the very beginning, at Creation.

The number 7 pictures completeness, for God completed His creation in seven days: “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (Gen. 2:1-2).

The number 7 pictures sanctification, for God sanctified the seventh-day Sabbath: “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Gen. 2:3).

The number 7 pictures a covenant, for the seventh-day Sabbath is a sign of God’s covenant with His people: “Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you” (Ex. 31:13).

The number 7 pictures rest, for God rested on the Sabbath and commanded us to do likewise:

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. (Ex. 20:8-11.)

And the number 7 pictures liberty, for rest is a form of liberty. In addition to Creation, God told His people to keep the Sabbath for yet another reason: liberty. “And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut. 5:15). God gave His people liberty, just He has given us liberty from the bondage of sin and death (Rom. 6:18, 22).

Thus the number 7 pictures completeness, sanctification, covenants, rest, and liberty, and all these things are pictured by the seventh-day Sabbath. But we can see the same meaning throughout Scripture, beyond the Sabbath. So let’s explore each of these facets in more detail. At the end, we’ll see that these all weave together into a beautiful tapestry, inseparably linked.

Completeness

Not only did the 7th day mark God’s completion of His physical creation, but also the end of the first week. The weekly cycle that He established continues to this day. Since Creation, every week has had 7 days, and the 7th day completes each week.

God also established 7 annual Holy Days, listed in Lev. 23 and Num. 28-29. As Nathan Griffith has described, they picture His plan from its beginning to its completion.

When Abraham dwelt in the Promised Land, God told him that his descendants would inherit the land several generations later, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). When it was complete, God brought the Israelites into the Promised Land and instructed them to march around Jericho once a day for 7 days, but on the 7th day, 7 times (Josh. 6:3-4). When the Israelites had completed God’s instructions, 7 priests blew 7 trumpets and the walls of Jericho fell down flat (Josh. 6:4, 15-20).

Throughout the Book of Revelation, too, which describes the completion of God’s plan, we find the number 7. There are 7 stars, which “are the angels of the seven churches” (Rev. 1:20). Seven lampstands portray 7 churches or congregations (Rev. 1:12-20). We also find 7 seals (Rev. 5:1, 5), 7 trumpets (Rev. 8:2-6), 7 thunders (Rev. 10:3-4), and 7 bowls. Of the 7 bowls, we read that they are “the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete” (Rev. 15:1).

Generally, the number 7 has a positive meaning, but not always. In Luke 11:24-26, Yeshua/Jesus described how a demon, after being cast out of a man, might later re-enter if the man isn’t on guard: “Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11:26). Jesus’ use of the number 7 signifies the final state of the man, his finished state, and it isn’t a good one!

Likewise, in Revelation, both the dragon (Satan) and the beast (the antichrist) have seven heads and ten horns (Rev. 12:3; 13:1). Yet the reign of the antichrist will mark the end of man’s rule, and Satan’s rule, on this earth. This age of wickedness will be completed, and Jesus Christ will return in power and glory to set up His Kingdom on earth (Rev. 19).

Sanctification

For God’s people, completeness and sanctification go hand in hand. As we saw in our study of the number 6, man (6) becomes complete (7) only through God (1). Only through Jesus Christ and His sanctifying blood can we become complete. And so, throughout the Bible, we see that the number 7 also represents sanctification. In fact, we see this facet of the number 7 perhaps more than any other!

Under the Old Covenant, anyone who touched a corpse would be ritually unclean for 7 days, after which his purification would be complete and he would be clean. To the army of Israel, God said, “And as for you, remain outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person, and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves and your captives on the third day and on the seventh day. And you shall wash your clothes on the seventh day and be clean, and afterward you may come into the camp” (Num. 31:19, 24).

God required 7 days for various other types of cleansing, too, as we discover in Lev. 12-15. In Lev. 12, we see that a woman would be ritually unclean for 7 days after giving birth to a male baby, or 14 (7+7) days after giving birth to a female baby. In Lev. 13-14, we find that any person, garment, or dwelling in which leprosy was found would be unclean for 7 days. If the leprosy disappeared, they would be clean. If not, they would be unclean for another 7 days. And in Lev. 15, we read that various types of bodily discharges could result in 7 days of uncleanness, after which the person would be clean.

At the dedication of the tabernacle and the Levitical priesthood, God required both the priests and the altar to be consecrated and purified for 7 days (Ex. 29:35-37). The altar was further sprinkled 7 times with anointing oil (Lev. 8:11). As part of each sin offering, the priest sprinkled the animal’s blood before God 7 times (Lev. 4:6, 17). During the sin offering on the Day of Atonement, too, the high priest sprinkled blood 7 times before both the Ark of the Covenant (Lev. 16:14) and the altar of burnt offering (Lev. 16:19).

The number 7 factored into many other sacrifices, too. The priests consecrated each new month by offering 7 lambs (Num. 28:11). They likewise offered 7 lambs on each of the 7 days of Unleavened Bread (Num. 28:19-24), on Pentecost (Num. 28:27), on the Day of Trumpets (Num. 29:2), and on the Day of Atonement (Num. 29:8). On each of the 7 days of the Feast of Tabernacles, they would offer 14 (7+7) lambs (Num. 29:12-32), and on the Eighth Day, once again, 7 lambs (Num. 29:36). When David brought the Ark to Jerusalem, he offered 7 bulls and 7 rams (1 Chron. 15:26). King Hezekiah cleansed the temple by offering 7 bulls, 7 rams, 7 lambs, and 7 male goats “for a sin offering for the kingdom, for the sanctuary, and for Judah” (2 Chron. 29:21). And God told Job’s three friends to offer 7 bulls and 7 rams so that He would overlook their sin (Job 42:8).

All these offerings and all these cleansing ceremonies in the Old Covenant, of course, pointed to Jesus Christ and the New Covenant. As Heb. 10:11-12 explains, “And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” Again, Heb. 9:9-10 speaks of all these rituals thus: “It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience — concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation.”

All these things were symbolic, and God chose all the numbers for a reason, especially the number 7. When Jesus Christ died to sanctify us from sin, He died as our Passover Lamb on Nisan 14, “the Preparation Day of the Passover” (John 19:14). Fourteen, of course, is 7+7. This day ushers in the 7-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, picturing the complete removal of sin: “Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7-8).

The 7th day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as we’ve observed elsewhere, pictures baptism. Much like the unclean washed with water on the 7th day of their separation and became clean, so we, too, after accepting the blood of Jesus Christ, must wash with the waters of baptism to be cleansed of our sins: “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22).

There’s another fascinating Old Testament type of baptism, involving the number 7, that I’d like to highlight. When Naaman the Syrian came to Elisha the prophet and asked to be healed of his leprosy, Elisha told him to go and wash 7 times in the Jordan River. “So he went down and dipped seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean” (2 Kings 5:14).

Let’s take a quick glance at a few more examples in which the number 7 pictures sanctification.

When God brought Israel into the land of Canaan, He cleansed the land of its wicked inhabitants. Specifically, He drove out 7 nations before the Israelites: “And when He had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, He distributed their land to them by allotment” (Acts 13:19).

The process of cleansing the land began at the first city Israel encountered: Jericho. As we noted earlier, here’s what God instructed His people: “You shall march around the city, all you men of war; you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets” (Josh. 6:3-4).

After King Solomon finished building the temple in 7 years (1 Kings 6:38), he dedicated it to God. We read, “At that time Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the entrance of Hamath to the Brook of Egypt, before the LORD our God, seven days and seven more days — fourteen days” (1 Kings 8:65). The account in 2 Chron. 7 adds a few more details: “They observed the dedication of the altar seven days, and the feast seven days” (v. 9). We’re further told that Solomon dedicated the temple in the seventh month (1 Kings 8:2; 2 Chron. 5:3; 7:10), partially coinciding with the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles, for he sent the people home on the 23rd day of the month (2 Chron. 7:10), the day after the Eighth Day or “Last Great Day.”

Later, during the reign of King Ahab, when Israel plunged deeper into idolatry than ever before, God told Elijah, “I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18). Seven thousand whom God sanctified, who remained faithful to the covenant with their Creator.

In Psa. 12:6, we read, “The words of the LORD are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” In this, we see both completeness and purity. We might say that God’s words are completely pure!

God is perfect and holy. Always has been, always will be. We mortal human beings, on the other hand, have not. For us, sanctification is a process, and that process involves a lot of correction. Thus we often see the number 7 linked to correction. Here are a few examples.

God told the Israelites that, should they turn away from Him, He would punish them. Should they still refuse to repent, He would punish them 7 times more (Lev. 26:18, 21, 24, 28). For their wickedness, Gideon punished the elders of Succoth — 77 men — with “thorns of the wilderness and briers” (Judg. 8:14-16). God humbled Nebuchadnezzar until 7 times had passed over him (Dan. 4:16, 23, 25, 32).

The whole purpose, of course, was to cleanse these people of their wickedness, to turn them back to God. As Prov. 20:30 tells us, “Blows that hurt cleanse away evil, as do stripes the inner depths of the heart.” And as we read again in Jam. 1:2-4, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” The whole purpose of correction is to bring about sanctification, perfection, and completion — all of which are pictured by the number 7!

Covenant

Those whom God sanctifies, those whom He makes complete, are in a covenant with Him. And so we often see the number 7 associated with covenants. In Gen. 21:27-32, we discover,

27 So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant.

28 And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves.

29 Then Abimelech asked Abraham, “What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs which you have set by themselves?”

30 And he said, “You will take these seven ewe lambs from my hand, that they may be my witness that I have dug this well.”

31 Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there.

32 Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba.

In Hebrew, Beersheba (Strong’s # H884) means “well of seven” or “well of an oath.” The root word transliterated as “sheba” is the Hebrew word shava (Strong’s # H7650), which, according to Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, means to “swear, seven oneself, bind oneself by seven things.”

It’s no wonder, then, that the seventh day Sabbath is also a sign of God’s covenant: “Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you” (Ex. 31:13).

The seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, too, points to God’s covenant, for it begins with the Passover sacrifice. Under the Old Covenant, slaughtering the Passover lambs foreshadowed Jesus’ death as our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). And what happened at Jesus’ death? Not only did He die to sanctify us and cleanse us, but also, “He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death” (Heb. 9:15). So Christ’s death on Nisan 14 (7+7), “the Preparation Day of the Passover” (John 19:14), ushered in both the New Covenant and the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread. His blood is the blood of the New Covenant (Mat. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25; Heb. 10:29).

As we saw earlier, God instructed that the Levitical priests be sanctified and dedicated for 7 days before beginning their service. This inauguration pictured not only sanctification, but also their covenant with their Creator. Of the tribe of Levi, God said, “My covenant was with him, one of life and peace, and I gave them to him that he might fear Me; so he feared Me and was reverent before My name” (Mal. 2:5).

When God made a covenant with Noah, He set the rainbow in the skies as a sign of that covenant (Gen. 9:13-16). As we’ve noted before, rainbows have 7 visible colors.

Jacob agreed to serve 7 years for Rachel, to enter into a marriage covenant with her (Gen. 29:18-20). Samson entered into a marriage covenant with a Philistine woman and held a wedding feast for 7 days (Judg. 14:12, 17-18), as Jacob also had done when he was tricked into marrying Leah (Gen. 29:27-28). And when Samson sinned and broke his Nazarite vow, the covenant between him and God, the 7 locks of hair on his head were shaved off (Judg. 16:17-19).

Finally, when King Asa and the people of Judah entered into a covenant with the Creator, they sacrificed 700 bulls and 7,000 sheep (2 Chron. 15:11). As we’ve observed in another post, this covenant happened at the Feast of Pentecost, which itself is a feast of sevens. But more on that in a moment.

Rest

At Creation, God rested on the seventh day. But it’s not just the seventh-day Sabbath that pictures rest. We find other instances of the number 7 linked to rest, too.

God commanded the Israelites, when they entered the Promised Land, to let their land rest every seventh year: “When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a sabbath to the LORD. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather its fruit; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the LORD. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard” (Lev. 25:2-4).

And after God cast the Israelites out of the land because of their wickedness, He caused it to rest and lie fallow for 70 (7x10) years: “And those who escaped from the sword he [Nebuchadnezzar] carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years” (2 Chron. 36:20-21).

But the ultimate rest for God’s people is what the seventh day Sabbath foreshadows: His Kingdom. The apostle Paul wrote that the Sabbath and Holy Days “are a shadow of things to come” (Col. 2:17).  Heb. 4:1-11 expounds further. Verse 4 reminds us of the seventh-day Sabbath that God established at Creation, saying, “For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.’” Then we’re told that another, better rest remains for us in the future: “Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it” (Heb. 4:1). So the Sabbath — the seventh day — pictures God’s Kingdom.

Liberty

The Sabbatical years weren’t just years of rest for the land, though. They were also years of liberty. As God reminded His people shortly before the fall of Jerusalem, “I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying, ‘At the end of seven years let every man set free his Hebrew brother, who has been sold to him; and when he has served you six years, you shall let him go free from you.’ But your fathers did not obey Me nor incline their ear” (Jer. 34:13-14).

Seven sevens — forty-nine years — ushered in another year of liberty, too: the Jubilee. “And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family” (Lev. 25:10).

Bringing It All Together

Now, as noted earlier, all these facets weave together into a beautiful tapestry. All the meanings of the number 7 are linked together. One cannot be complete without Almighty God, without entering into a covenant with Him. Entering into a covenant with the Almighty requires sanctification. And sanctification is a prerequisite for entering His Kingdom, where we will have rest and liberty.

Some of the 7s listed in the Bible capture most, or even all, of these elements at once. At the beginning of this post, we saw that the seventh-day Sabbath pictures all of them: completeness, sanctification, God’s covenant, rest, and liberty.

The 7 annual Holy Days, listed in Lev. 23 and Num. 28-29, likewise cover all these elements. The first two are the first and last days of the 7-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, which, as we saw earlier, pictures the complete removal of sin through the blood of Jesus Christ and the waters of baptism. That’s sanctification. And by accepting Jesus’ blood and being baptized into His name, we’re also entering into a covenant with Him. His blood is the blood of the covenant.

The next Holy Day, Pentecost, is called the Feast of Weeks in the Old Testament (Ex. 34:22; Deut. 16:10, 16; 2 Chron. 8:13). Now, “week” in Hebrew is shavua (Strong’s # H7620), which, as one might expect, means “a period of seven days.” And indeed, God instructed us to count seven Sabbaths (Lev. 23:15) or seven weeks (Deut. 16:9) — seven sevens — to reach Pentecost, which is itself the 50th day. Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, is quite literally a feast of sevens!

As we’ve seen before, several covenants in Scripture happened on the Day of Pentecost, and in the New Testament, God sent the Holy Spirit on that day (Acts 2:1-4), thereby sealing the covenant with His people that was initiated by Jesus’ sacrifice. “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who [which] is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:13-14).

The remaining four of God’s annual Holy Days all fall during the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, and picture future events such as the First Resurrection, Jesus Christ’s millennial reign, the Second Resurrection, and the new heavens and new earth. All these events pertain to the Kingdom of God, the ultimate Sabbath which we strive to enter.

And so the seven annual Holy Days, like the Sabbath, picture each facet of the number 7, for they portray the journey from redemption to the Kingdom of God. Completeness, sanctification, God’s covenant, rest, and liberty.

To wrap this up, let’s look at one final example. In Acts 6, we learn that the twelve apostles soon found themselves needing help to do the work of God and care for His people. So they said to the rest of the people, “It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business; but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:2-4). These seven men took on the role of “deputies” to the apostles, helping not only with ministering to the poor, but also with preaching the gospel, as the succeeding passages demonstrate. These were seven men sanctified by God. Seven men in covenant with their Creator. Seven men to proclaim the good news of God’s Kingdom.

There’s an incredible depth of meaning to the numbers God uses in His Word, and the number 7 is no exception!

Thoughts? Additions? Disagreements? Leave a comment below!

Biblical Numbers Series:

1: The Number 1 and Its Biblical Meaning

2: Why the Number 2 Means Your Life!

3: God, Man, and the Number 3

3: The Apostle Paul and the Number 3

4: Four Is the Door to God's House

5: God's Hand and the Number 5

6: Why Is 6 the Number of Man?

7: Let's Explore the Number 7!