NOUGHT

of offerings. The nose is the organ of the breath by wliich men live (Gn 2' etc.). The breath is easily stopped or expelled, hence the fact signifies the tran-siency of human Ufe (Is 222). Excited breathing, with distention of the nostrils when moved by indignation, led to the nose being used fig. for anger (Gn 27", and very often). Ezk 8" refers to the custom of putting a twig to the nose, apparently in idolatrous worship, the significance of which is now obscure. For 'nose-ring,' see Ornaments, § 2. W. Ewing.

NOUGHT. — See Naught; and notice, further, the phrase 'set at nought' (Pr l^s, Mk 9"). 'To set' is 'to value,' and 'nought' is 'nothing,' so the phrase means to reckon of no value.

NOVICE.— In 1 Tl 3Mt is enjoined that the bishop must not be a novice. The Or. word (neophytos, lit. 'newly planted') was afterwards used in the technical sense of one who has not yet taken reUgious vows. Here it is general — one newly introduced into the Chris-tian community.

NHHBEB. — 1. Notation. — The decimal scale of nota-tion was used by the Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and, so far as we know, by the other nations mentioned in the Bible, i.e. they reckoned by units, tens, hundreds, etc.

2. Variety and range of numerical terminology.— The Heb. language expressed the integers from one to any amount by words denoting units, tens, a hundred, two hundred, a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand, and by combinations of these words. Thus the highest number expressed by a single word is twenty thousand, the word used meaning double ten thousand. The word 'millions' in AV of Gn 2^' is a mistranslation; it should be 'ten thousands' as in RV. The number referred to in this verse, ' thousands of ten thousands,' for the descendants hoped tor from Rebekah, and the number of the angels in Dn 7'°, Rev 5", 'thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him,' if taken Uterally, would be the largest numbers mentioned in the Bible, but they are merely rhetorical phrases for countless, indefinitely large numbers. In Rev T the redeemed are 'a great multitude which no man could number' (cf. Gn 13") — the nearest approach which the Bible makes to the mathematical idea of infinity.

The largest hteral number in the Bible is the number of Israelites fit for warlike service, ascertained by David's census as 1,100,000, in addition to the men of Judah 470,000 (1 Ch 21'). In 2 S 24», however, the numbers are 800,000 and 500,000 respectively. Qose to this comes the army of Zerah (2 Ch 14»), 'a thousand thousand,' i.e. 1,000,000; and in 2 Ch 17™-, Jehosha-phat has an army in five divisions, of 300,000, 280,000, 200,000, 200,000, 180,000 respectively. The number of fighting men amongst the Israelites is given in Nu 232 as 603,550; and later on in Nu 26" as 601,730.

Hebrew also possessed a few special forms for the ordinals, first, second, etc., and to denote 'seven times,' etc.; in other cases, especially for the higher numbers, the cardinals are used. There are also a few words for fractions, 'a third,' 'a quarter.'

The Biblical Greek calls for no special comment; the writers had at their disposal the ordinary resources of Hellenistic Greek. We may, however, call attention to the disputed rendering in Mt 1822, where RV has 'seventy times seven,' RVm 'seventy times and seven.'

3. Symbols.— In the Heb. text of the OT, and also for the most part in the Gr. text of the NT, numbers are denoted by words. This method is also the only one used in the two ancient Heb. inscriptions — the Moabite Stone (rather later than Ahab), and the Siloam inscription (usually ascribed to the time of Hezekiah). As the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians used figures as well as words to denote numbers, it is possible

658

NUMBER

that the Israelites also had arithmetical figures; but at present there is no positive evidence of such a usage.

In Isiter times the Jews used consonants as numerical signs; the units from one to nine were denoted by the first nine letters, the tens from ten to ninety by the next nine, and the hundreds from one hundred to four hundred by the remaining four letters. Other numbers were de-noted by combinations of letters. A curious feature of this system is that the natural combination for IS, viz. Yod= 10, Hc=5, was not used because ' Yod, He' or Yah was a form of the sacred name Yahweh, which might not be pronounced; accordingly Teth = 9 and Waw=6 were substituted. This system is still commonly used to number the chapters and verses in Heb. Bibles. A similar system was also used by the Greeks, and is occasionally found in the NT; thus the Number of the Beast, 666, in Rev 13", is written by means of three letters.

4. Arithmetic. — There is no evidence of proficiency in arithmetic beyond the simplest operations, but we have examples of addition in connexion with the census in the wilderness, the numbers of the separate tribes being given first and then the total (Nu l'^- 26™); subtraction is referred to in Lv 27"; an instance of multiplication is Lv 258, 7X7 = 49; and Lv 25'" impUes a kind of rule of three sum.

B. Round Numbers. — As in other languages, 'round numbers,' exact tens, hundreds, thousands, etc., must often have been used by the Israelites, on the under-standing that they were only approximately accurate; and in the same way smaller numbers were sometimes used indefinitely for 'a few'; cf. our 'half a dozen.' For instance, the exact ten thousands of Jehoshaphat's armies given above are doubtless round numbers. Again, in Lv 26*, 'five of you shall chase a hundred,' merely means, 'a handful of you shall put to fiight many times your own number.' This indefinite use of a small numberis specially common where two consecutive Units are given as alternatives, e.g. Is IT, ' two or three,' 'four or five.' A variety of this idiom is the use of two consecutive units to introduce emphatically the higher of the two; e.g. Pr 302' -por three things the earth doth tremble, and for four which it cannot bear'; then four things are enumerated. In addition to hundreds and thousands and ten thousands, the most common number used in this approximate way is 'forty': people constantly live or reign for 'forty years' or multiples of forty years. It is a matter of opinion how far the numerous 'sevens,' 'tens,' and 'twelves' were originally intended as exact numbers. Probably, however, in many cases what were originally round numbers were taken afterwards to be exact. For in-stance, David's reign is given as 40 years, 2 S 5'; in the next verse this period is explained as made up of 7i years at Hebron and 33 at Jerusalem — an explana-tion which implies that, apart from some odd months, the 40 years were the actual length of the reign. There are some indications, too. that the various 40's and 80's were added in with other numbers to obtain a continuous chronology. Again, in Nu 3^> the census gives 22,000 Levites, which one would naturally under-stand as a round number; but in vv."-6i it is taken as an exact number, inasmuch as it is ordained that because the 22,273 firstborn exceed the Levites by 273, re-demption-money shall be paid for the surplus.

In view of the references to captains of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens 'in Dt 1'', it has been sug-gested that these terms are sometimes not numerals, but names corresponding to our regiment, company, squad, etc., and denoting bodies of men whose numbers varied. 'Thousand' especially has been held to be a term denoting 'tribe' or 'clan' (see Jg 6", 1 S 10"); so that 'a thousand' might contain comparatively few men. This view has been applied to make the census in the Bk. of Numbers more credible by reducing the