The number 4
Creation, earth, universality, the world
Four belongs to creation's furniture: the fourth day brought sun, moon and stars (Genesis 1:14-19), Eden's one river parts into four heads (Genesis 2:10), and four gospels present one Christ from four vantage points. Daniel's vision names a kingdom of gold, silver and brass, with a fourth of iron mixed with clay (Daniel 2:32-33, 40-43). E. W. Bullinger reads four as the number of the created, material world, man in relation to the earth he was given, and traces a recurring "three plus one" pattern through the tabernacle's materials. The four rivers and Daniel's four kingdoms are the text's own structure; Bullinger's broader claim that four always signals "creation" wherever it turns up is his system's extension of that pattern, not a rule Scripture itself states.
The mathematics
- The first composite number: 4 = 2².
- Lagrange's four-square theorem (1770): every positive whole number, without exception, is the sum of at most four perfect squares.
- The four-colour theorem (Appel & Haken, 1976): four colours suffice to colour any map on a flat surface so that no two touching regions share a colour — the first major theorem proved with the help of a computer.
Every property here was checked before it was printed.
The same number, in what He made
DNA is written in a four-letter alphabet — adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine (Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell).
The human heart has four chambers: two atria receiving, two ventricles sending (Gray's Anatomy, 41st ed.).
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
Creation and the material world; man in relation to the created order.
“It is emphatically the number of Creation; of man in his relation to the world as created… It is the number of material completeness.”
“Creation and things that are made — the world number.”
In Hebrew and Greek
Hebrew
Arba (אַרְבַּע) - four
Greek
Tessares (τέσσαρες) - four
First occurrence
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
The pattern in Scripture
- Four corners of the earth
- Four seasons
- Four winds (Ezek 37:9)
- Four living creatures (Rev 4:6)
- Four Gospels
Key verses
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into fou...
And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And ...
And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years.
And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
4:4 verses
And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had re...
And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his ha...
And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord; ...
This shall be the service of the sons of Kohath in the tabernacle of the congregation, about the mos...
But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day.
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.