The number 120
A completed waiting company; the limit of days
Before the Flood God says, 'his days shall be a hundred and twenty years' (Genesis 6:3) — read either as man's shortened span or the years of longsuffering before judgment; Moses dies at exactly a hundred and twenty, 'his eye was not dim' (Deuteronomy 34:7). At the temple's dedication a hundred and twenty priests sound trumpets as the glory fills the house (2 Chronicles 5:12-14); in the upper room 'the number of names together were about a hundred and twenty' (Acts 1:15) waiting for the Spirit to fill another house.
The mathematics
- 120 = 5! — one times two times three times four times five.
- Four figurate identities at once: the fifteenth triangular number, the eighth tetrahedral number, the eighth hexagonal number, and five factorial.
- The smallest triply perfect number: all its divisors together sum to 360, exactly three times itself.
- Highly composite — sixteen divisors, more than any smaller number.
Every property here was checked before it was printed.
The same number, in what He made
A red blood cell lives about a hundred and twenty days and is then taken and replaced — the body renewing every carrier of its own breath three times a year, and never once asking permission (Franco, Transfusion Medicine and Hemotherapy 39, 2012).
Sources are named in the line itself. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”
What they have said about this number
Three forties — a divinely appointed period of probation, or a company waiting.
“Is made up of three forties (3 × 40 = 120). Applied to time therefore it signifies a divinely appointed period of probation… Applied to persons it points to a divinely appointed number during a period of waiting.”
First occurrence
'My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever… yet shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.'
The pattern in Scripture
- Moses' 120 years divide as 40+40+40 (Egypt, Midian, wilderness — Acts 7:23, 30, 36)
- 120 priests at the first temple's filling; 120 disciples before Pentecost's filling
Key verses
And Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever… yet shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.
And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
And in these days Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren, and said (and there was a multitude of persons gathered together, about a hundred and twenty).
…and with them a hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets.
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.