There is something mysterious, maybe prophetic, about the number 127 !!!
The number 127 is a strange and special number that seems to have a general association with similar sorts of things when it appears...fundamental things...one important thing being, in particular, the identity of humans (mankind) as a God-formed and God-owned Creature that belongs to God and is loved by God, sometimes rescued by God.
The number 127 first shows up in the Bible, arguably, in the very chapter and verse where it is mentioned that God first formed a man and woman in His image. It is in the Bible's 'book number 1' which is Genesis, but I will only look at the chapter of Genesis (chapter 1) and the verse number (verse 27). This may be the first incidence of this number in the Bible. It is therefore like a 'birth record of mankind' sort of number as used there, for humans. Here is chapter 1, verse 7 in Genesis:
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
End quote.
God the Father had a chance here, in His word, to point out that He had created Mankind to have many genders. He did not do that. He pointedly said that He made them male and female. He went a bit out of His way to tell us how many genders humans have. Two! There is not a thing wrong with you, not a thing in this world, if you are literally born a hermaphrodite from your mother's womb. That is a thing God superintended...your growth and development within your mother's womb is a thing God superintended. It might give you a more difficult life to have some of the reproductive equipage of both genders, and I am sorry about that for you if so, but there is no room on anyone's part to negatively judge a person who emerges from their mother's womb with the external and internal equipage of both genders. That was from or at least was allowed by God somehow, for reasons that He surely knows. And you are therefore a fully approved creature of God, a member of mankind, just like the next human. But, that said...this is where God spoke and said He made us with two genders and that we are made in His image. And it appears that the number 127 in the Bible is first purposefully associated with something here: with God's first creation of mankind, who, He wanted us to know, were manufactured in two genders and in His own image. So that makes it a somewhat fundamental verse. But, perhaps to emphasize what He wanted this number to be associated with, what thoughts and images He wanted it to evoke in our minds when we heard it or saw it, He next used the number 127 in His Word in the following spot:
The next book, then chapter, then verse that associates with the number 127 is book 1 (Genesis), chapter 2, verse 7. Here are those words, from Book 1, chapter 2, verse 7, with some preceding and following verses for context...but please focus on verse 7. It tells almost the exact same story as where we first saw the number 127 encoded. It speaks of God personally forming mankind in the very beginning. From Genesis 2, starting at verse 4:
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams[b] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the Lord God formed a man[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
End quote.
Not the important mention of trees.
So this verse, verse 7 in chapter 2 of Genesis, marks the point where God re-formed dust into the form of a a man for the first time, then exhaled His own breath into that man He had created and made the man be alive. And two especially great trees are mentioned.
Israel was anciently given an area of land to occupy as their own early on in the Bible narrative. It would be permanently their own it seems to say as you read the various places in the Bible where it is discussed. The actual geographical land of Israel was first given to the Israelite descendants of Abraham by God through a promise He spoke to Abraham when He had Abraham look upon the land with His eyes right after Abraham left his homeland and family for the first time to begin to wander as God willed him to. God said this to Abraham:
12 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”[b]
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring[c] I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
End quote
The word Moreh means 'teacher' or 'oracle.' Shechem means 'shoulder'. God taught Abraham the oracle above that you just read, and gave Abraham promises, And there is a great tree involved.
In the above quote I put the 7th verse in bold for emphasis. It is the place where God first promises Canaan...even today's modern Israel lies in this same land...to Abraham's offspring, which the Jews are a great and celebrated part of. This is Genesis 12:7 where God promises this perennial homeland to the descendants of Abraham. Genesis 12:7 See the 1...2...7 ? God used the number 127 here, in this chapter and verse, to identify and perhaps to relate the creation called Man with Himself. Now He also might have allowed the number 127 to relate the geographical land of Israel, for the first time, as being a possession that belonged specifically to His chosen people, the descendants of Abraham. He would make that more specific as time rolled on, focusing in on just which fraction of Abraham's descendants would occupy it (because Abraham would have a whole lot of descendants as the centuries passed!!!)
So, it is not a 100% certainty that He wanted us to associate the number 127 with mankind being a dual gendered creation made from dust in the image of God, made alive by the breath of God, but you have to admit that there are uncountable topics that either verse could have touched upon or been about, yet they are about almost the exact same event and topic. Apparently, the first time the number 127 was used in God's Word it was concerning nearly the exact same thing as the second time. It is rolled out as the 'birthday number of mankind's creation' in a way. It is a birthday number for the people of God. A new birth, a birth for humans, who are intended to be people of God, children of God, a life form type, later a large throng, later a nation or nations of creatures who are loved by God, who love God and who bear His breath in their lungs and are dependent upon God for their being and their daily needs.
There is a chance, therefore, that 127 was designed to be a pretty special number...at least from a human's perspective.
In the Bible the Jews, mostly the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and some the Levites, become wicked against God Almighty and in the 6th century they are defeated by the Babylonians and hauled away to Babylon to be servants and slaves. It is a reckoning for their wickedness, but though He punished them severely, God still loves them and after they have received 70 years of punishment, just as the earlier prophet Jeremiah told them they would one day receive if they didn't repent, then Babylon was conquered in its own turn. And the new conquerors were the Medo-Persian Empire. The king of these Medo-Persians is Cyrus the Persian at that time, a mighty military commander as well, who has conquered just about everything he ever tried to conquer. Cyrus had apparently understood that some divine presence had guided him, pre-destined him, to be a powerful conqueror everywhere he went. He felt empowered and shielded by some unknown god. But he did hot know which God this was who brought him so many great victories. It was a mystery to him. Then he conquered Babylon and soon afterwards entered the city of Babylon in some sort of triumphal entry. That's when Daniel the captive Jewish prophet (an old man, now) approaches with some others and shows Cyrus some old Jewish scrolls, prophesies from Isaiah showing that a conqueror, specifically named Cyrus in the scrolls, would free God's captive people from a captivity that hadn't even happened yet when the prophecy was written. That prophecy was way more than 100 years old. And so, Cyrus, probably overcome with the knowledge that this had to be the powerful God who had enabled him to conquer where ever he had gone, emotionally told the Jews that they need no longer be slaves and could return to Jerusalem if they wished.
Jerusalem was about 900 miles away from Babylon so not too many Jews chose to emigrate back home to their destroyed city and their destroyed land. (That's about half as far as the much later 2,000 mile Oregon Trail trip from Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley of Oregon. And the vast majority of the Jews then living as slaves in Babylon had never been to Israel or Jerusalem...they had been born in Babylon.) They had gotten somewhat comfortable and used to Babylon. After all, they had lived there about 70 years, and even slaves can get used to a place and somewhat comfortable with their lives there. Not so many captive Israelites , or Jews if you prefer, chose to go back to their far away storied homeland during that first opportunity which King Cyrus granted them.
It was sort of the same, actually, 2,500 years later when the USA, a newly emerged super-power like the Medo-Persians had once been, sort of played the part of a latter day Cyrus by paving the way in the late 1940's A.D. for the scattered Jews to go back to the geographical homeland that they had once occupied in Bible days. At the very first, not all Jews felt like returning to the geographical bounds of ancient Israel to resettle the place. It probably sounded kind of scary? It was actually a pretty desolate land in the 1940's. Mark Twain had taken a trip there around 60 years earlier and spoke of traveling for hours in certain parts of geographical Israel without seeing a living human.
(Does gathering or re-gathering God's people relate to the number 127 ? In the Bible there is a Hebrew word usually spelled qabats. The word qabats means "to grasp, gather, collect or assemble.' It reportedly shows up 127 times in the Bible according to Strong's Concordance. Again, 127 times!
So now let's talk about the number 127 some more. In the book of Esther, which took place in about 483 b.c. to 473 b.c., we run across the fact that a good number of years after Cyrus had died a Persian king named Xerxes (also known as Ahasuerus) ruled over 127 provinces from India to Kush. Here is chapter 1, verse 1 of Esther. :
1 This is what happened during the time of Xerxes,[a] the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces stretching from India to Cush[b]: 2 At that time King Xerxes reigned from his royal throne in the citadel of Susa, 3 and in the third year of his reign he gave a banquet for all his nobles and officials. The military leaders of Persia and Media, the princes, and the nobles of the provinces were present.
End quote
(Take note, if you would, that the ancient Medo-Persian Capitol city called SUSA has the letters USA inside of it. It sounds dumb to point that out, but God guides everything, even language, as the Tower of Babel account makes clear. I bring it up because there are some strange possible indicators that there might be a mysterious and unexpected prophetic pre-figuring of America...the USA...in the ancient events surrounding the Persians defeat of Babylon. It is also a prefigurement because of helping to reestablish the Israelites back into 'geographical Israel' back then in the 5th century B.C. , when compared to the much later American and European defeat of Germany and Japan and Italy, and the subsequent assistance and efforts that the USA especially put into helping to re-establish modern Israel in the 1940's...there is a similar 'partnership'. In fact, American President Harry Truman was actually visited by some Jewish rabbis (Isaac Herzog 1949) who told him that it was his destiny to do the work of a modern day Cyrus. He did become the first world leader to officially recognize the nation-state of modern Israel. Many powerful American political figures opposed him in this, but he did it anyway. He had been a deeply convinced Christian man most of his life, and he kept the following prayer with him that he apparently read again each and every morning from the time he was 18 years old, according to some sources:
“Oh! Almighty and Everlasting God, Creator of Heaven, Earth and the Universe: Help me to be, think, to act what is right, because it is right; make me truthful, honest and honorable in all things; make me intellectually honest for the sake of right and honor and without thought of reward to me. Give me the ability to be charitable, forgiving and patient with my fellowmen – help me understand their motives and their shortcomings – even as Thou understandest mine! Amen, Amen, Amen.” End quote
He later referred proudly to being told that he had been given that holy role of a latter day Cyrus to play in history. He incidentally lived a lot of his life in INDEPENDENCE, Missouri (which is also a famous origination point for the Conestoga Wagon trains taking the Oregon Trail westward) and President Harry Truman ended up being a very key human figure in establishing an INDEPENDENT modern day Israel.
So, back to the Book of Esther, this mighty king Xerxes ruled over 127 provinces. There it is...the number 127. Is that important? Maybe yes, maybe no. All things in the Bible have some importance, but only God clearly knows the varying magnitudes. This king Xerxes is soon to reject his wife named Vashti. During a large royal celebration involving just about the whole kingdom she won't come to dance in front of Xerxes' inebriated friends when he summons her to do so. She shames him by defying his command to show her face and obey his wishes as her king and husband. Angry, he takes counsel of his courtiers...his wise advisors...and they tell him to banish her so that all women don't become disrespectful towards their husbands by watching her get away with it. So Xerxes puts Vashti away from him, banishes her, and later a try-out competition is held to see who his new wife will be. A young maiden named Esther...unknown to Xerxes she is secretly a Jew...becomes Xerxes choice and so a Jewess rises to this high position of being Xerxes' Queen. Just then a plot is hatched against all Jews throughout Xerxes Empire, and because of Esther's high position and her favor with her husband King Xerxes, and her cooperation with her Jewish uncle Mordecai, the plot to destroy the Jews is foiled and the Jewish people are saved because Xerxes, learning that the plot was intended to destroy his own Queen's people, intercedes. That is all in the book of Esther. Esther, her Persian name, means STAR, by the way. Hadassah, her Hebrew name refers to a Myrtyl Tree, which like an Olive Branch can be a symbol of peace to Hebrews. And Mordecai's Hebrew name, Petachia, means "God has Delivered". Kind of an allusion to Jesus in a way. And just as Jesus was brought in triumphantly to Jerusalem on a donkey some days before his crucifixion, so also Mordecai was reluctantly led around in triumph and honor by his enemy Haman. Mordecai told Esther to be brave and try to save the people of God though it cost her her very life...and she did. And Jesus told his followers to reach out to the world to save them even though it cost them their very lives. And they have. And Esther was grafted into Mordecai's family...he was an uncle that raised her like a father when she had no one. Likewise, Christians are people who are grafted into the family of God when they have no direct link with their own Father. There are lots of spiritual or metaphoric connections you can speak of here!
Later, in another Bible book called Nehemiah this Jew named Nehemiah talks the king of Persia (named as Artexerxes ) into letting Nehemiah leave to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild. Nehemiah mentions that he had risen to the very high position of 'cup bearer to the king'. Here is chapter 2 of Nehemiah where he gets up the nerve to ask King Artexerxes if he can be granted leave to make the long trip to Jerusalem to engage in rebuilding this ruined Jewish city where the rebuilding effort allowed under an earlier king, Cyrus of Persia, has not gone well or quickly. Nehemiah mentions that the Queen was there when he asked. That ought to have been Esther he referred to. :
2 In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before, 2 so the king asked me, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.”
I was very much afraid, 3 but I said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
4 The king said to me, “What is it you want?”
Then I prayed to the God of heaven, 5 and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my ancestors are buried so that I can rebuild it.”
6 Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?” It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.
7 I also said to him, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? 8 And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the royal park, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” And because the gracious hand of my God was on me, the king granted my requests. 9 So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.
End quote
So there is a connection of the number 127 (127 provinces!) to an empire that facilitates the restoration of the captive Israelites, those 13 tribes that make up the anciently chosen people of God in Biblical history, from the Persian empire of the 5th century B.C. (By the way, I say 13 tribes because Joseph's two sons had split into 2 tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. The original 12 tribes had become 13 tribes. And I acknowledge that many of the Israelite tribes, essentially 10 of the tribes, had been defeated and packed off to distant lands earlier, in the 8th century B.C., by Assyria. But not all. The Israelites that Babylon defeated and took captive back to Babylon had included some members of all 13 tribes.) But back to the subject, it is slightly surprising that America...the USA...also has a deep connection to the same number 127. To Psalm 127 specifically.
When the founders of the USA's 13 colonies (and so there is a joint relationship with the number 13 as well!) were trying to iron out the American Constitution's language at the Constitutional Convention held in the Pennsylvania Statehouse in Philadelphia on June 28 in 1787 A.D., the delegates had become mired down in argument and disagreements on wording and provisions the Constitution should contain, and it was the hot part of summer and tempers were getting short, etc. They had 'won the land', but they were having trouble 'building the house'. It looked like they might not ever be able to agree. But then, in a sort of a miracle, wise old Ben Franklin, who was not considered an overly Christian or religious man in his earlier years, yet was widely respected, rose that day and read a letter he had written pointing out that they should pray to God each day for grace upon their deliberations, which they had been failing to do. He reminded them that during the Revolutionary War against England, the War for Independence, there had been a regular habit of praying to God for wisdom and guidance as the early American Patriots worked things out, and everyone back then had believed that God's all knowing hand did guide their affairs to a successful outcome. He said that they should probably be doing that as well. Here is what he is said to have spoken that day. Benjamin Franklin had written up a letter to read from, addressing the President of the Constitutional Convention effort, but heard by all the assembled persons :
Mr. President
The small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other,”our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes and ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, some we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of Government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.
In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. ”Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move, that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of the City be requested to officiate in that service.
End quote
(Interestingly, Benjamin Franklin said in this speech that we should trust in God, and as history played out in America, he is on the largest currently circulated denomination of US cash bill, the United States $100.00 bill, and the US bills all say In God We Trust. They must all say that, by law. This is an important connection with our God and I honestly think we ought to ensure that digital currency does not cause this to be lost. )
He quoted from Psalm 127. They didn't adopt his idea for prayer at that very moment, but very soon did, and they suddenly were able to find a path for agreement with each other, get the Constitution written and then approve it. It was noted by a good number of participants that their communal prayer seemed to change the situation greatly for the good. And so, in this regard, the USA has Psalm 127 to thank for its successful formation. What does Psalm 127 say? :
1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the guards stand watch in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to[a] those he loves.
3 Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their opponents in court.
End quote
Notice how Psalm 127 speaks of sons born in one's youth being like arrows in the quiver. Whether it directly relates or not I won't say, but during both the ancient Achaemenid Period of the Persian Empire (550 B.C. to 330 B.C. which is the time frame of the Book of Esther and Nehemiah and Ezra as well) and during our time as the United States of America, both nations/empires had the EAGLE as a major symbol. Ancient Persia and the USA are united in that as well. In fact, the eagle depicted in the Great Seal of the United States is holding 13 arrows in its left claw and an Olive Branch in its right claw, so there again is the number 13. And just as the Persians (an eagle?) represented a mighty protector in war to the 13 Israelite tribes returning to Israel and Jerusalem, likewise the American Eagle has (overall) been a strong protector in war to the regathered Israelites of the 20th and 21st century. The Olive Branch the eagle holds represents peace, of course. The ancient Persians helped the Israelites rebuild in PEACE even though the locals of their time intellectually opposed the return of those Jews. And the American military strength has likewise kept modern Israel largely at peace with Muslim and Arab neighbors who are not so pleased at all about their 20th century return to the lands that Almighty God had anciently granted them as their own peculiar place to dwell.
There honestly are a fair number of correlations between ancient Persia and modern USA when it comes to connection with Israel. And both connect to this number 127 and to the number 13. And did the name Esther mean 'star'? We have the stars and stripes on our flag. There are 13 stripes, by the way, and there were the 13 colonies but anciently the 13 tribes of Israel as well. Is there perhaps quite a lot of connecting data points for there not to be a spiritual connection?
But keep in mind what was just said about Esther's name meaning STAR, and how Esther saved her people. Do you know that if you go to the New Testament to book number 1, Matthew, chapter 2, verse 7 (see the '127) it says this (I'll include some surrounding verses for context)? :
2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’[b]”
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
End quote.
This is pretty amazing how the 127 shows up here. For one thing, these Magi were from Persia, I have heard scholars say. They were following a STAR associated with a great Savior, just as the name Esther meant STAR and she was associated with a great salvation back in her time with the Persians. The number 127 just keeps seeming to associate itself with great events where God is forming or guiding or saving His people.
Here is another New Testament excerpt associated with the number 127. It is Matthew chapter 12, verse 7 (see the 127?) and surrounding verses. It is here that Jesus makes the amazing statement (in the minds of the Sabbath observant Jews) that He, Jesus, is Lord of the Sabbath! :
12 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
3 He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5 Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? 6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’[a] you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
End quote.
Jesus, who shall have primacy in all things, so we are told in scripture, let the powerful Pharasaic Jews of His time know that He had authority over what constituted respectful acknowledgement of even the hallowed Sabbath Day. His followers, the Christians, would not so long after this be tasked with going through the grainfields. (Going through the waiting peoples of the world who needed to hear the Gospel. People that Christians need to reach out to are sometimes typified as grain in the Bible. Even Jesus used that analogy.) They were tasked with gaining followers for their Lord where ever they could. His followers were innocent if they did good on the Sabbath and did God's work on the Sabbath it seems to tell us. And they had to have some sustenance to do their work. Jesus was taking axiomatic legalism to task ahead of time it seems. The Laws of Moses, which they were leaning on, had in fact been pointing to Jesus for well over 1,000 years, but the Jewish leadership of Jesus' day hadn't put that together in their minds yet...most of them had not, at least.
If we go to 2 Samuel that is the 12th book of the Old Testament, so its chapter 7 would be a major '127'. That chapter is about how the greatly beloved man of God, King David, a warlike man of blood, finds out that it will be his son Solomon (with the 300 concubines and 700 wives. Wives are royally associated with their husband more closely than a concubine, just as Jews are a people favored above the Christians in some respects for the sake of the Holy Father who chose them first as His peculiar people of God. The number 300 is associated with Christians it would seem, by the way. And the numeral 3 begins the number 300, just as Christians believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit..those 3. Is there a connection? And the number 7, the first numeral in the number 700, is certainly a number associated in several ways with the Jews. The Sabbath is the 7th day, the gold candelabra in their temple had 7 branches, and there are other things as well.) but anyway, it would be Solomon and not David who will be allowed to build God's house...His Holy Temple...just as the Christians, the followers of Jesus, would build up God's house on Earth through Jesus rather than the Jews doing it. Maybe there is a relationship there with the number 127 once again. The building up of the house, as Ben Franklin spoke about when citing Psalm 127. The laborers that would not work in vain, because God would be with them.
But even though David is being left behind in a sense when it comes to the building up of God's house on Earth, that chapter also assured David that God will remember him and his service and would have regard for David's blood line and that David's descendants shall sit on the throne continuously.
Jesus ended up being one of those descendants of both David and Solomon, through Mary. Jews were a religion of Blood Sacrifice. Christians are a religion of Spreading word of the Mercy and the Wisdom of Jesus. It is the Christians that will build God's house, but it is the Jews that will be his ruling people once again one day. Jesus will live among them in Jerusalem ruling all the Earth from Jerusalem for 1,000 years. Some Christians will apparently be allowed to serve as Priests there, though. Scripture seems to say so. Anyway, Jesus is associated with the number 1,000. He has a 1,000 year reign that will begin one day. Solomon had an association with the number 1,000. He had 1,000 concubines and wives.
Sarah, Abraham's wife, who was 10 years younger than Abraham, respectfully called him Lord and was bravely loyal as she traveled beside her roving husband in a life that offered Sarah no real worldly security. In fact, she was so beautiful that she was twice taken captive by foreign kings who wished to have her for their wife or at least in their harem. How did Abraham manage these two situations? He made out to be her brother instead of her husband, so the kings wouldn't kill him to have her. He told her to play along with that, so she didn't contradict him when he said it. So, since it was understood by these kings that Abraham was her brother and not Sarah's husband, they were kind to him and gave him gifts, ingratiating themselves to Abraham instead of killing him to have clear rights to Sarah's hand.
Fortunately each king in the two chronologically separate incidents had to wait for Sarah to undergo a certain period of purification that their two different cultures both happened to separately require before they were allowed to consummate their relationship with her. During this purification time God Almighty Himself cursed both nations with such hostility that they both became keenly aware that something had gone very, very wrong in their kingdoms, and they were each able to discover that it was the kidnapping of Sarah...unbeknownst to them a married woman...that had led to the amazing misfortune that had suddenly befallen their kingdoms. In both cases they released Sarah back to Abraham with apology gifts to Abraham. In one case she was pregnant with Isaac, but it didn't show yet apparently. Oddly, Isaac's life prefigured Jesus' life in several strange ways.
Also oddly, what happened to the nations that kidnapped Sarah (not on just one occasion but upon two!) was eerily similar to what happened when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant about 500 years later...disaster broke loose in their kingdom to a terrifying degree which caused them to repent of stealing the Ark and return it in a state of dread and shame to the people and place they got it from. Sarah even held a future Jesus of Nazareth in her body, in a way, Jesus that would become the Atoning Blood of all humanity, just as the Ark of the Covenant had a dish on its top that was where the blood of a sacrifice that atoned for the sins of God's people was later dribbled each year, on the holiest day of each year...the Day of Atonement...by the High Priest of Israel. Sarah was Jesus' ancestor on the human side, as was Abraham. Sarah carried chromosomes that would contribute to Jesus in the flesh, and God tore apart those kingdoms that kidnapped Sarah, He bore down on them intensely to let them know that they had done something terribly, terribly wrong and had angered some immensely powerful God, though He didn't let them know too much more than that. But you can bet that this story made the rounds in the Middle East during the time that Abraham wandered that area, and it can't be doubted that he wandered much more safely when the kings of this region learned that for some reason you absolutely did not want to lay hands on Abraham as he wandered about because a God a whole lot mightier than anything they worshiped might make your whole kingdom pay the price if you did.
Sarah died at the age of 127. Very few women in the Bible have their age of death specified in the Bible. Sarah died in Hebron, about 10 miles north of where her far future descendant Jesus would be born, in Bethlehem, and about 10 miles south of Jerusalem, where her descendant Jesus would be crucified to atone for the sins of the men and women who would choose to be baptized in His mighty name and follow Him, calling Him Lord. And she had given birth to Isaac, whose life paralleled and presaged the life of Jesus in many ways.
I have sometimes thought that if you could have the choice of being protected by hundreds of thousands of the strongest soldiers in human history, or you could be Sarah, kidnapped and waiting out your days of purification in what amounted to a harem holding cell just so you could soon be ravished against your will by some pagan king, it would be better to be Sarah. There was an actual 0.0% chance that Sarah was going to suffer any actual harm at all. She was a central part of the human conduit, the prepared line of descendancy leading to God's ultimate divine plan of love and redemption for his constantly sinful, selfish and unworthy human children. She was the absolute dead center definition of a woman who was completely bullet proof, absolutely safe, and unquantifiably protected to a degree that no human could easily imagine. But Sarah didn't know all of that, and probably felt great trepidation. She probably only knew that she had to try to have faith and be brave in what certainly must have seemed the darkest and most hopeless of situations...and so she did.
Revelation 12 (which has a verse 7 causing it to hold a form of the 127 number) speaks of the time Jesus will have been enthroned in the last days, taking charge in power, authority, and Majesty on Earth.
12 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.”[a] And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11 They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
End quote.
Proverbs chapter 12, verse 7 once again speaks about how a house which is upheld by God stands firm! Remember how Ben Franklin used Psalm 127 to establish that this was true as he addressed the Constitutional Convention delegates. It seems to be a frequently associated theme of the number 127 :
Proverbs chapter 12, verse 7
The wicked are overthrown and are no more,
but the house of the righteous stands firm.
End quote.
It reminds me of how captured Sarah held firm in her faith, on two separate occasions no less, and to everyone's surprise it was the offending empires that paid the price for wronging her. Jesus told us He was our Lord (as Abraham was Sarah's husband/Lord) but Jesus also told His followers that they would be like family to Him, like junior brothers, I suppose (like Abraham told Sarah to refer to him as her brother. Sarah, wandering where ever her Lord led her, was sort of like the Christian Church wandering in faith to do the work of their Lord Jesus. Sarah had to just have faith, and Christians have to just have faith. In some ways they are alike.
During World War II it wasn't just the western nations that helped save the harshly oppressed Jews so that they could be regathered a few years later. They may have fought because they were invaded, but they certainly fought furiously. The Soviet Union lost far more soldiers fighting Nazi Germany than the USA did. In fact, they actually pressed westward and fought Germany, even freeing a great many Jewish captives at the concentration camp of Auschwitz where so many were exterminated. In fact, the Russian Red Army liberated thousands of Jews at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Jan 27th. 1/27...another instance of 1 2 7 showing up in the warp and weave of Jewish history, and associated with a rescue of God's people once again.
Maybe I'll call this discussion finished for now, but I am sure that many out there will see much that I didn't because it seems like God gives all of us some limited portion of the understanding, but not all. He keeps the full understanding of scripture for Himself for the time being, I think.
The number 127 is just starting to show its spiritual richness, not that I will ever know the fullness of it. But it is a very interesting Biblical number.