The number 1
Unity, primacy, God's sovereignty
God's own numbers: unity, completeness, divine order
Scripture roots unity in God himself: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4), a verse Jesus names "the first and great commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38). Paul later stacks the same word sevenfold, one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all (Ephesians 4:4-6). E. W. Bullinger reads the Shema's Hebrew word for "one," echad, as a composite unity rather than a bare digit, and argues that a number which cannot be divided fittingly names God's sole sovereignty, first in time, rank and claim on worship (Matthew 6:33). That grammatical argument is Bullinger's own system at work, not something the text states outright; the Shema's own plain point is simply that Israel's God is one, not many.
The mathematics
- The multiplicative identity: 1 × n = n for every number there is. It is the only number that leaves every other number exactly as it found it.
- It is deliberately not counted as prime — and excluding it is precisely what makes every number's prime factorization unique (the fundamental theorem of arithmetic).
- Simultaneously the first triangular, square, pentagonal, hexagonal, star, centred-hexagonal and tetrahedral number: the seed of every figurate series at once.
Every property here was checked before it was printed.
What they have said about this number
Unity and primacy — the independence and sovereignty of God, which excludes all rivals.
“In all languages it is the symbol of unity. As a cardinal number it denotes unity; as an ordinal it denotes primacy.”
“Unity, superiority, priority, beginnings — and God Himself.”
In Hebrew and Greek
Hebrew
Echad (אֶחָד) - unity, used in the Shema: 'The LORD our God is one LORD'
Greek
Heis (εἷς) - one, first, primary
First occurrence
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
The pattern in Scripture
- One God (Deut 6:4)
- One faith, one Lord, one baptism (Eph 4:5)
- One mediator (1 Tim 2:5)
Key verses
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry l...
And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for...
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, a...
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, becau...
1:1 verses
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his househol...
And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying...
And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on ...
These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness, in the p...
Related numbers
The works behind these readings
- E. W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture (1894)The standing catalogue of what each number means and where it returns: the spine of this whole section. Public domain; free to read in full.
- John J. Davis, Biblical Numerology (1968)The counting discipline: which numbers the text itself repeats, and which readings run past what it says.
- Ryken, Wilhoit & Longman (eds.), Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (1998)The entries on Three, Seven, Twelve and Forty: how each image works across both testaments.
- Chuck Missler, Cosmic Codes (1999)The letter-value material and the design case built on it.
- Troy Brewer, Numbers That Preach (2007)What each number preaches: the founder's named guide, quoted here within the cap on living authors, with the book named so you can go and read it whole.