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Michael Hoffman's avatar

Congratulations Matthew on the encyclopedic breadth and depth of this article.

Concerning the number seven, I would add:

In Hebrew, "Lemala Min Hateva" is the realm of the spirit and it is there that we experience the paradoxical point where the awareness of numerical synchronicities provokes poetry and inspires art.

In the corporeal realm (Hebrew: "teva") there is this writer’s sightings of world-historic occurrences on the 42nd degree of north parallel latitude in the northeastern United States. My attention was provoked by James Shelby Downard’s poetic-intuitive sighting of the significance of the latitudinal 32nd and 33rd degrees on the plain of teva, where other numbers such as 7 invite acknowledgement of their undeniable remarkableness, commencing with YHWH’s Seven-Day creation.

Seven is Biblically woven into everything from agriculture to loans and debt: “Beginning with the day after the sabbath, the day on which you bring the sheaf ("omer") for elevation, you shall count seven full weeks; you shall count to the day after the seventh week, fifty days. Then you shall present a new grain offering to the Lord. (Leviticus 23:15-16).

In Kabbalah the number 50 ( 7 weeks comprised of 7 days commemorated in the 50th week) is a constituent of the realm of "Lemala Min Hateva" — which is to say, it is above calculation.

The seven sets of seven Sabbath years conclude with Jubilee in the 50th year — all debts abolished and all unnecessary labor (unrelated to the maintenance of health and welfare) suspended — while time itself, habit and routine, are too suspended.

Michael Hoffman

www.RevisionistHistory.org

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