|
by
Doug Ward |
One summer when I was about twelve years old, I was stung twice in the same
week by yellowjacket wasps. For some time after that, I tried to give those
insects a wide berth. I was experiencing a fear known as
"spheksophobia."
Names
have been attached to many sources of fear, even exotic ones like the fear of
certain numbers. For instance, fear of the number 13 is triskaidekaphobia, and
fear of the number 666 is hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.
Mathematically
speaking, 666 is an interesting number. It is the sum of the numbers 1, 2, 3,
etc. up to 36, while 36 is itself the sum of the numbers one through eight. In
Roman numerals, 666 is represented by DCLXVI, in which each of the symbols D,C,L,X,V,I shows up exactly once.
These
are not reasons for fear, though. The scary thing about 666 is its appearance
in the Bible's book of Revelation-and in chapter 13, no less-as the
"number of the beast."
John,
the author of Revelation, wrote to Christians in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey)
in the late first century. Asia Minor was part of the powerful Roman Empire,
which kept the peace and provided many benefits to its subjects, while imposing
certain requirements. Among those requirements was participation in worship of
the emperor.
For
early Christians, whose first loyalty was to the God of Israel and his Son,
Jesus the Messiah, emperor worship was unacceptable. But by refusing to
participate, they faced public disapproval, exclusion from mainstream social
and economic circles, and sometimes even death.1
In
Revelation 13 John described a vision in which the political and religious
authority of Rome appeared as two beasts who wielded great power and demanded universal
submission. Followers of Rome were marked with "the name of the beast or
the number of its name." This number was 666, the "number of a
man" (verse 18).
|
A
Mysterious Number |
Throughout Christian history there has been much speculation about the meaning
of 666 in Revelation 13:18. One popular approach has been numerological,
associating a number with each letter in the Greek, Hebrew, or Latin alphabet
and looking for names with letters adding up to 666. The Church father
Irenaeus, writing in the late second century AD, observed that many words had
totals of 666 in Greek, including "Lateinos,"
a word for "Romans" (Against Heresies 5.30).
In
another famous example, first pointed out in the nineteenth century, when the
name "Nero Caesar" is written in Hebrew, one spelling gives a total
of 666. Alternatively, there is a variant spelling that gives 616, which
appears instead of 666 in Revelation 13:18 in some manuscripts.
The
meaning of 666 has also been explained with biblical connections. Irenaeus
described 666 as a "summing up of the whole of that apostasy which has
taken place during six thousand years." He noted that Noah was 600 years
old at the time of the Flood, when evil in the world had reached a dangerous
level. Then in the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous golden image was
sixty cubits high and six cubits wide (Da 3:1). These figures add up to 666 (Against
Heresies 5.28-29).
|
Solomon
and 666 |
A significant biblical appearance of 666 is in 1 Kings 10:14, where 666 is
given as the weight in talents of the gold collected by King Solomon each year.
A talent has been estimated to be about seventy-five pounds, which would make
666 talents almost twenty-five tons of gold.
The
life of Solomon included both positive and negative aspects. On the one hand,
he presided over a golden age in the history of Israel, a type of the messianic
era (1 Ki 4:24-25). He supervised the building of a magnificent Temple (1 Ki
5-7). His knowledge and wisdom were renowned, attracting the attention and admiration
of surrounding nations (1 Ki 4:29-34; 10:1-10).
On
the other hand, Solomon amassed his great wealth through heavy taxation (1 Ki
4:7-19) and forced labor (1 Ki 5:13). (The Hebrew word for "forced
labor" in 1 Kings 5:13 is the same one used for Pharaoh's
"taskmasters" in Exodus 1:11.) By accumulating wives, wealth, and
horses, he expressly violated God's instructions for Israelite kings (1 Ki
10:14-11:8; Dt 17:16-17). Influenced by his foreign wives, he even sponsored
the worship of false gods (1 Ki 11:4-8).
Sadly,
then, Solomon at his worst was uncomfortably similar to the Roman emperors who
came a thousand years after him. The number 666 from 1 Kings 10:14 is thus a
fitting symbol for the beasts of Revelation 13.2
All
of these interpretations of 666 point toward oppressive human empires and their
rulers. In general, numbers play a symbolic role in the book of Revelation.
Seven is featured as a symbol of completion or perfection. The number 6, which
is just less than 7, hints at the idea that human beings, created on the sixth
day, on their own fall short of perfection. The number 666 implies that Rome,
as impressive and powerful as it seemed to be, was a mere human empire that
wielded authority only because God allowed it.
John
wrote Revelation to encourage Christians not to be frightened by the Roman
beast and its number. If they would remain faithful to the one true God, he
said, they would be rewarded with eternal life on a renewed earth. He
transmitted the following message from God in Revelation 2:7: "To the one
who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise
of God." Because of God's love, power, and faithfulness, there is no need
to be afraid of 666.
1For more on the
pressures faced by these Christians, I recommend David deSilva's
historical novel, A Week in the Life of Ephesus, IVP Academic, 2020.
2See
Keith Bodner and Brent A. Strawn, "Solomon and 666 (Revelation
13.18)," New Testament Studies 66 (2020), pp. 299-312.
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