A bad case of gematria

I’m currently in Canberra for the AFES National Training Event. John Dickson this morning was preaching on “The pedigree of Jesus” from the genealogy in Matthew 1. We learnt how the purpose of the genealogy in Matthew is to connect Jesus to the promise of the great son of David; the messiah who would come to be the saviour of Israel and the world.

According to John (that's Dickson, not the apostle), Matthew shows this connection between Jesus and David in four interesting ways:

1. He just says it straight up. 1:1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David

2. Jesus is shown to be a direct descendent through the family tree.

3. The person mentioned most in Jesus’ genealogy is not Jesus but David who is mentioned five times. 1:1, 6, 6, 17, 17

4. And finally, the special use of the number fourteen. There is no doubt the number fourteen is significant – Matthew leaves out entire generations (an acceptable practice at the time) so that both sections of the genealogy number 14 generations. He then specifically draws attention to this in 1:17. Furthermore, David’s name is the 14^th mentioned in the genealogy.

Now all this makes perfect sense to me, but it’s the next bit that leaves me a tad quizzical.

John then went on to describe gematria. No it’s not a sexually transmitted disease but “the artful use of the numerical values of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.” There is a secret code in the genealogy just waiting to be unlocked. So get this – when you take the name David and translate it into Hebrew, and then take these letters and attribute to each letter the corresponding value from “the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabet system” the sum adds up to, you guessed it (Cue spooky music); 14.

Artful indeed.

John knows his stuff so I’m willing to take his word at this point. But to be honest, it sounds like a bit of codswallop to me. A bit too much Da Vinci Code for my liking.

In the end, it was a bit of a geek out moment especially for those into the whole number thing. To me, it just made me feel like a bit of an idiot for not knowing Hebrew. And really points 1-3 were kind of enough. Actually in reflection point one, that Matthew just comes out and says that Jesus is the son of David is probably sufficient.

Then again, maybe it's just more proof that the geeks shall inherit the earth.