What does the number 40 represent in the Bible?
Numbers in Scripture are rarely accidental, and forty is one of the most repeated of them all — the rain on Noah's ark, Israel's wilderness years, Moses on the mountain, Jonah's warning to Nineveh, and the Lord's temptation. Commentators are broadly agreed on what it signals: a set period of testing, long enough to bring out what is really there.
Full Probation
The clearest short definition comes from a Bible dictionary entry on symbolic numbers, which gathers the instances into one pattern:
Morrish Bible DictionaryFORTY = 10 × 4. Complete probation to bring to light good or evil. Moses was forty years in the desert, being himself tried; he was in the mount two periods of forty days, which were times of trial to the Israelites. Ex. 24:18; Ex. 34:28. The spies were forty days searching the land. Num. 13:25. The tribes were tested forty years in the wilderness. Acts 13:18. Goliath challenged Israel forty days. 1 Sam. 17:16. Saul, David, Solomon, and Jehoash were each tested by a reign of forty years. Elijah's period of testing at Horeb was forty days. Nineveh was given forty days for repentance. Jonah 3:4. The Lord Jesus was under temptation forty days. Mark 1:13.
Ten Times Four
That "10 × 4" is not decoration. One writer works out why those two factors, taken together, produce a number for testing:
The Bible Treasuryfive is the human number (five fingers, toes, senses, etc.): therefore the number representing human responsibility must be twice five: thus there are two tables of law, and ten commandments: one set of duties to God and another to man. Well, let these ten responsibilities be universally tested (that is, multiply by 4), and the result is forty.
Endurance And Patience
Testing has a second face: it takes time, and time has to be borne. One commentator draws the thought out of the law's limit on beatings, where the maximum penalty was capped just short of forty:
J. N. DarbyAs to the number "forty," it seems to me to have the sense of endurance in it. Forty stripes save one is thirty-nine; for they need a three-thonged rod, so that they could only give thirty-nine by the law, not to exceed forty. It is a length of duration and trial in that way, testing and patience and endurance.
The Wilderness Forty Years
Israel's forty years in the desert are the long-form example. The point of the delay was not punishment alone — it was discovery, and it ran alongside God's daily care:
J. N. DarbyHe talks of the forty years there. "And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not." There we find all these ways of God proving the heart, yet He was watching their clothes and their feet all the time. He adds another thing — "to do you good in the end."
When The Testing Runs Out
Jonah's message to Nineveh shows the other edge of the number — a countdown attached to judgment. Read as a picture, that forty days stretches wider than one city:
Edward DennettThe number forty has a distinct meaning in the word of God, as may be seen in the forty years' wandering of Israel in the desert, the temptation of our Lord during forty days in the wilderness, etc. It indicates the period of full probation… we have simply the announcement of the fact, that after the world has been fully tested, tested in every variety of way, it will be destroyed. It is the cross of Christ that gives us the culmination of God's test of the world; and so our Lord said, "Now is the judgment of this world."
Christ Reverses The Result
Every other forty ends the same way. With Christ the outcome is inverted, and He alone has two of them:
W. T. P. WolstonProbation or testing in connection with the first man's history only ends in failure, death, and judgment. I need not say that in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ it was the very reverse. When He was tested by Satan for the first forty days in the wilderness, it only showed the complete and perfect triumph of Christ over the foe of man. And when you come to His second forty days, in resurrection, you get the most beautiful unfolding of what the Second Man brings in, and what is the fruit of His victory over Satan, sin and death.
Counted across the whole Bible, the series has a shape — a beginning and an end:
W. T. P. WolstonThey begin at a moment when God judged the sin of man in his own person, and overwhelming judgment swept away the sinner. They close in the days of the Lord Jesus, when, sin having been dealt with and put away by His atoning death, He proclaimed the fruits and effects of His victory for saints and sinners alike.
Summary
- Test — Forty marks a complete probation: a period long enough to bring to light whether there is good or evil in what is being tried.
- Measure — It is ten (the full measure of human responsibility, as in the ten commandments) multiplied by four (the universal number) — responsibility tested everywhere.
- Endure — Testing takes duration, so forty also carries patience and endurance; the law would not let a beating exceed it.
- Fail — Wherever the first man is the one tested — the flood, the wilderness, Israel's kings, Nineveh — the forty ends in failure and judgment.
- Reverse — Christ alone has two: forty days tested by Satan and unbeaten, then forty days risen, opening a new era of blessing founded on redemption.