Bible Numbers - 666

Perhaps the most famous number of all...

The other day I looked down at my watch to see how many steps I had. 6666. One worse than the dreaded 666.

Some people I know shudder when they come across the number 666. Maybe it’s on a license plate or a receipt. Maybe it shows up in a sports statistic. Regardless, the number 666 has become synonymous with evil, in particular with the antichrist. This line of thinking comes from the Bible.

“This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666” (Revelation 13:8).

The book of Revelation is Apocalyptic literature, which tries to communicate truth through symbolic language. For us, who do not have this genre of literature in our culture, it just sounds bizarre. How do we calculate such a number of a person? But at least some of the people reading Revelation for the first time would have understood the math formula John was assigning them and figured out who 666 was referring to: Emperor Nero. There’s no need for us to try and figure out who 666 refers to in our day. Antichrists still exist, but John didn’t give us the code for today.

The specificity of 666 to that time and that person means it is unlikely that other instances of 666 have anything to do with the antichrist, but let’s take a look anyway. Who knows what we might find?

One occurrence is in Ezra 2:13 in reference to a census, “The sons of Adonikam, 666.” Strangely, this number gets adjusted in a somewhat parallel passage in Nehemiah, from 666 to 667. Several of the numbers in that section are different between Ezra and Nehemiah, but some are the same. There could be a variety of reasons for this, but that’s not the point today. Only one other mention is made of Adonikam. In Ezra 8, 63 of his descendants are listed among the number of people who returned initially from exile. But nothing is said of him or his descendants, either good or bad. So there is not much we can do with this occurrence.

Two other occurrences are in reference to Solomon’s wealth. Both 1 Kings 10:14 and 2 Chronicles 9:13 record the exact same words, “Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold.”

Solomon’s downfall was chasing after the gods of his far too many wives, but let’s just admit that it is interesting that Solomon’s gold intake is this amount. The love of money is the root of all evil etc.

And while I find that connection to Solomon and wealth curious, sometimes when we go on curiosity journeys with the Bible, we don’t find something super illuminating. But that’s okay, because the answers aren’t the reason we go on curiosity journeys. It’s the questions that are important, the process of digging, the posture of curiosity.

Andy