300 (Three Hundred)
Symbolic treatment of this number in the corpus
Jones
Three hundred is treated in the corpus primarily by Jones, who connects it to the Hebrew letter Shin (שׁ, numeral value 300) with the root meaning: teeth — to consume, devour, destroy. The number marks moments in Scripture where God deploys a small, chosen company as an instrument of consuming power; the paradigmatic instance is Gideon’s three hundred (Judg. 7).
Biblical References
| Reference | Context |
|---|---|
| Gen. 5:22 | Enoch walked with God three hundred years after the birth of Methuselah |
| Gen. 6:15 | Length of Noah’s ark: three hundred cubits |
| Judg. 7:6-8 | Gideon goes to battle with three hundred chosen men |
| Judg. 15:4 | Samson catches three hundred foxes for his assault on the Philistines |
| 2Sam. 23:18 | Abishai killed three hundred men with his spear |
| 1Kgs. 10:17 | Three hundred shields of hammered gold in Solomon’s palace |
Symbolism in the Corpus
Stephen E. Jones
Jones grounds 300 in Hebrew alphabetical numerology. The letter Shin (שׁ) carries the numeral value 300 and the pictographic meaning of teeth, with the derived core meaning: to consume, to devour, to destroy. Jones applies this in his gematria analysis of the Israelite royal history: the gematria of the names of Israel’s kings totals 3,900 = 13 × 300. The factor 13 (rebellion) multiplied by 300 (destruction) embodies the self-consuming character of Israel’s revolt against the house of David. “While Judah’s kings provided the genealogy to Jesus Christ, the kings of Israel were in open revolt against the house of David.” 1
See Also
Footnotes
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Jones, The Biblical Meaning of Numbers. ↩