The number 5
Grace, God's goodness, divine favor
Five runs through the tabernacle's building instructions, curtains and bars measured out by fives (Exodus 26:3, 26:26), and David chooses "five smooth stones" before facing Goliath (1 Samuel 17:40). Moses' fifth book grounds Israel's rescue in God's own name and love, not Israel's merit (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). E. W. Bullinger reads five as grace, four (man's created weakness) plus one (God's added strength), and calls David's five stones a picture of that same weakness carried by divine power. This reading leans on Bullinger's own arithmetic more than on a claim the text makes about fives themselves; the tabernacle's fivefold measurements are real, but "five means grace" is the tradition's label laid over them, not Scripture's own statement.
The mathematics
- 5 = 2 + 3, the sum of the first two primes, and itself the third prime.
- The hypotenuse of the smallest Pythagorean triple, 3–4–5 (9 + 16 = 25) — the rope-and-knot right angle every ancient builder used.
- There are exactly five Platonic solids — tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron — and there can never be a sixth. Euclid proves it in the last book of the Elements, and the proof is the closing movement of the whole work.
Every property here was checked before it was printed.
The same number, in what He made
Every four-limbed creature — amphibian, reptile, bird, mammal, and man — is built on the same five-digit plan. The hand that writes and the wing that flies are the same five bones, differently shaped.
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
Grace — redemption following creation, God's favour toward man.
“These are the five great mysteries, and five is therefore the number of GRACE.”
“The grace of God — His favour, where God gives us the ability to overcome something.”
In Hebrew and Greek
Hebrew
Chamesh (חָמֵשׁ) - five
Greek
Pente (πέντε) - five
First occurrence
And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos:
The pattern in Scripture
- Five books of Moses (Torah)
- Five smooth stones (1 Sam 17:40)
- Five Levitical offerings
- Five loaves fed 5000
- Five wise virgins (Matt 25)
Key verses
And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos:
And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years: and he died.
And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared:
And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died.
And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
5:5 verses
And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burd...
And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he hath ...
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
(I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to shew you the word of the Lord: for ye were afraid...
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.