The number 11
Disorder, incompleteness, judgment
Eleven carries no meaning the text states outright; its clearest note is negative space, eleven apostles remained once Judas was gone (Acts 1:26; 2:14), one short of the twelve first sent out (Matthew 10:1-4). The spies' journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea, meant to take eleven days, stretched into forty years after Israel's rebellion there (Deuteronomy 1:2-3, 19-46). E. W. Bullinger reads eleven as disorder and incompleteness, either ten plus one, exceeding a completed order, or twelve minus one, falling short of governmental completeness, and gathers examples such as Edom's eleven chieftains and several kings whose eleven-year reigns ended in ruin (Genesis 36:40-43; 2 Kings 24:18). This reading is almost entirely Bullinger's own system; Scripture nowhere states that eleven signifies disorder, and the honest label here is tradition, not text.
The mathematics
- The fifth prime, and the smallest two-digit palindromic prime.
- Divisibility by eleven is tested by alternately adding and subtracting the digits — a trick that works in no other base but ours.
- It sits one past ten and one short of twelve: after order, before government.
Every property here was checked before it was printed.
What they have said about this number
Disorder and disintegration — an addition to divine order, and a falling short of divine government.
“Whether we regard it as being 10 + 1, or 12 − 1, it is the number which marks disorder, disorganization, imperfection, and disintegration.”
“Heroes rising — where God recognises the faithfulness of people.”
In Hebrew and Greek
Hebrew
Achad asar (אַחַד עָשָׂר) - eleven
Greek
Hendeka (ἕνδεκα) - eleven
First occurrence
And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.
The pattern in Scripture
- Eleven apostles after Judas' fall
- Joseph's eleven brothers bowed to him
- Eleven curtains for the tabernacle (Exod 26:7)
Key verses
And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, a...
And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream...
And thou shalt make curtains of goats’ hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains sh...
The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and th...
And he made curtains of goats’ hair for the tent over the tabernacle: eleven curtains he made them.
11:11 verses
And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their...
And Moses said unto the Lord, Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and wherefore have I not fo...
But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the...
And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: ...
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.