50: The Importance of Numbers in the Bible

The number fifty: the traditional number in a jubilee period. It is the atomic number of tin. There are fifty states in the United States of America, Hawaii being the fiftieth to join. In years of marriage, fifty is the golden anniversary. When written as 50%, it is equivalent to one half. The moon is fifty times smaller than the Earth. 
 
In Kabbalah, a discipline taught in Judaism, there are fifty Gates of Wisdom and fifty Gates of Impurity. In classical mythology, Hercules is believed to have had fifty sons. 
 
Some say that the number fifty in the Bible represents joy and the feast, by which they mean Pentecost, a feast that occurs fifty days after Passover. The word Pentecost comes from the Greek for fiftieth and has come to replace the original name of the festival “Feast of Weeks” or “Shavuot”. Whilst originally a Jewish feast, the day has become important to the Christian faith. As recorded in Acts 2:1-31, the disciples and other followers of Christ were in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Weeks when a mighty rushing wind started blowing and tongues of fire appeared. The disciples “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:4 ESV) It is this event that we celebrate every year in the Christian calendar. 
 
It is thought there are around seventy-seven mentions of the number fifty in the Bible. It is never actually mentioned in the Pentecost reading from Acts, so I have looked at a few of the other examples to determine whether the number holds any importance elsewhere. 
 
The Feasts of Weeks is first mentioned in Leviticus 23:16: Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord. (NIV)
 
Noah’s ark was fifty cubits wide as commanded by God. “This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.” (Genesis 6:15 NIV)
 
In Leviticus 25, the term “Jubilee” is explained. “Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields.” (Leviticus 25:10-12 NIV)
 
Other examples include:

• Genesis 18:24 (NIV): What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not sparethe place for the sake of the fiftyrighteous people in it?
• Exodus 26:5 (NIV): Make fifty loops on one curtain and fifty loops on the end curtain of the other set, with the loops opposite each other.
• Leviticus 27:3 (NIV): set the value of a male between the ages of twenty and sixty at fifty shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary shekel
• Numbers 4:3 (NIV): Count all the men from thirty to fifty years of age who come to serve in the work at the tent of meeting.
• Numbers 8:25 (NIV): but at the age of fifty, they must retire from their regular service and work no longer. (The good old days when retirement was at fifty!)
• Numbers 31:30 (NIV): From the Israelites’ half, select one out of every fifty, whether people, cattle, donkeys, sheep or other animals. Give them to the Levites, who are responsible for the care of the Lord’s tabernacle.
• Deuteronomy 22:29 (NIV): he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
• 2 Samuel 15:1 (NIV): In the course of time, Absalom provided himself with a chariot and horses and with fifty men to run ahead of him.
• 1 Kings 7:2 (NIV): He built the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon a hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high, with four rows of cedar columns supporting trimmed cedar beams.
• 1 Kings 18:4 (NIV): While Jezebel was killing off the Lord’s prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, fifty in each, and had supplied them with food and water.
• 2 Kings 1:10 (NIV): Elijah answered the captain, “If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men.
• 2 Kings 15:25 (NIV): One of his chief officers, Pekah son of Remaliah, conspired against him. Taking fifty men of Gilead with him, he assassinated Pekahiah, along with Argob and Arieh, in the citadel of the royal palace at Samaria. So Pekah killed Pekahiah and succeeded him as king.
• Esther 5:14 (NIV): His wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Have a pole set up, reaching to a height of fifty cubits, and ask the king in the morning to have Mordecai impaledon it. Then go with the king to the banquet and enjoy yourself.” This suggestion delighted Haman, and he had the pole set up.
• Haggai 2:16 (NIV): When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty.
• Luke 7:41 (NIV) Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.
• John 8:57 (NIV): “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

 
Genesis, the first book of the Bible is fifty chapters long, making it the fourth longest book. 
 
The visions of Mary of Jesus of Ágreda (1602-1665) claim that it took the Holy Family fifty days to flee to Egypt after the angel warned Joseph about King Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents. 
 
In the writings of the Roman Catholic Franciscan tertiary Maria Valtorta (1897-1961), she claims fifty guards were stationed around the summit of Golgotha after Jesus’ crucifixion. 
 
As with the number forty, fifty may have been used as way of saying “a lot” or “umpteen”, however, as you can see from the above examples, the number fifty is most often used in relation to measurements or amounts. This suggests the number may have had a stronger significance, which may or may not be linked to Pentecost. Some theologians say the number fifty is connected to the life of man but there are also other interpretations.
 
René Allendy (1888-1942) said that fifty symbolises the universe, also stating, “it is a favourable number marking a grace, a kindness, a regeneration.” On the other hand, Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803), a devout Catholic, claimed the number fifty represented “the spiritual ascension to the intuition, the number of the illumination.” 
 
Whatever the interpretation, there is no doubt that the number fifty has most strongly become associated with Pentecost. So, to finish, I leave you with a fun fact: the word “soldier” appears in the Bible fifty times.