Episode Details

Bible Study 101: What Do Numbers Mean in the Bible? Hearing Jesus, Devotional

This episode is part of Bible Study 101, a series teaching a method Rachael calls the color method. You take one short passage and read it several times, marking something different in each color, and by the end you can see things on the page you'd never catch reading at normal speed. This week the passage is John 6:1-15, the feeding of the five thousand.

Today's color is orange, and orange marks numbers and quantities. Numbers matter in Scripture, and this is also the place where people go off a cliff, so Rachael spends real time on the guardrail before she ever picks up a pencil. What gematria is, why 11:11 is not a message from God, and why the Bible was never written as a code to crack. Then the marking, which turns out to tell the whole story on its own. And at the end, the question of why there were leftovers at all, and who had to carry them.

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Chapters

0:00 The last color of the week

0:37 What orange marks

1:18 Why numbers matter in Scripture

1:46 Verse numbers are not inspired

2:40 A caution about 11:11 and chasing numbers

4:35 What numbers tell you about scale

5:57 What gematria is, and where it goes wrong

7:49 Scripture was not written as a puzzle

9:13 The guardrail

10:11 A listener in a country where following Jesus costs something

11:29 Reading John 6:1-15

13:25 Marking the numbers

17:20 Line the numbers up in order

18:39 What John is actually doing

19:08 Twelve baskets and twelve disciples

20:35 What does this mean, not what does this mean to me

21:05 Why there were leftovers at all

22:23 Who had to carry the baskets

22:55 Prayer

23:49 Homework

What is the color method?

It's a way of studying Scripture that Rachael developed while teaching sixth and seventh graders who had never been shown how to read the Bible for themselves. She published it in her first book, She Hears.

You take a short passage, ten to fifteen verses, and mark it with colored pencils or highlighters. Each color answers one question. Green marks the who. Blue marks the supernatural. Red marks the action words. Purple marks timing. Orange marks numbers.

The colors aren't the point. You can't put a color on a word without making a decision about that word, and you can't make a decision without slowing down enough to actually read.

What does orange mark?

Numbers and quantities that appear in the text itself. Five loaves, two fish, 200 denarii, 5,000 men, twelve baskets.

It also covers quantity words that aren't digits. Every, none, both, few, plenty, enough, nothing, all, as much as they wanted. Anything that counts or measures.

Are verse numbers part of the Bible?

No, and this matters. Chapter and verse numbers were added centuries later by scribes and scholars so people could find and reference passages. Rachael's kids in children's ministry called them the addresses, which is a good way to think about them. They're a filing system, not Scripture.

So John 6:6 doesn't get marked. The number six in that reference isn't inspired and it isn't pointing at anything.

Is 11:11 a message from God?

No. And this is where Rachael spends real time, because numbers in Scripture is the area where people most o