What does the number 4 represent in the Bible?

These various thoughts with which 4 connects show it to be the world-number: and in Scripture it is that of the "four corners of the earth," of earthly completeness and universality, which thus has on it the stamp of weakness, whatever men may boast. It is the number of the "four winds of heaven" — the various and opposing influences of which the earth is the scene, and which so depict the moral contrasts and opposition which mark the fallen creature's ways.

FOUR. Completeness in that which is created or ordained of God. Four winds from the four quarters of heaven, Jer. 49:36. Four quarters of the earth, Rev. 20:8. In arranging the camp of Israel there were four standards, Num. 10:14-25. Ezekiel saw four living creatures, each with four faces, four wings, and four hands, Ezek. 1:5-8; compare the four living creatures in Rev. 4:6.

In the river with four heads that went out of Eden to water the garden (Gen. 2:10), the whole earth obtained its refreshment from the primary fountain. The evangelists who record the life of Him who was sent to be the Saviour of the world are four in number, and their testimony is for the whole earth.

Passing to number four: it is the earth number, the number of this world. We speak of the four corners of the earth, the four winds. It is that which has to do with the earth. We have already seen that the book of Numbers has to do with this present world. Forty days, forty years — how they tell us of testing. You might write at the head of the book of Numbers, "Forty years," for it is the history of the forty years' testing in the wilderness.

The material creation has this divided character — the earth beneath and the heavens above. The earth itself again divides into land and water. Organic creation divides into animal and vegetable. Man himself is material and spiritual. These divisions... suggest that lack of all-pervasive unity, the absence of which characterizes the creation, and which calls for a bond to hold it fast in One outside itself.

Four is the number of the world as the place of trial, of the four corners of the earth and the four winds of heaven; and the Lord is seen in the four Gospels in the scene of what He Himself calls His "temptation," facing the sins and sorrows and needs of men. Himself Man, and hiding Himself from nothing human, all the perfection of His Person is thus revealed to us.

It is therefore most suggestive that the four narratives of the perfect, unfailing Life should not yield to such a cleavage; but its divisions, if such they may be called, are 3 + 1, rather than 2 x 2.

Twelve: the earthly number, four, multiplied by the heavenly number, three, for it is spiritual ministration dispensed on earth; twelve tribes, twelve gates to the New Jerusalem, twelve apostles through whom the Holy Spirit, the living water, is given.

Much difficulty has arisen from lack of precision as to these meanings, while the positively contradictory ones advocated by different writers have been a stumbling-block with many as to any faith in them at all... without some Scriptural or natural warrant, the latter method would be quite unjustifiable, as any numbers might be arbitrarily taken in this way, and entire uncertainty of all meaning be the result.