Is There Any Significance Of The Number Forty (40) In The Bible?

What does the number forty (40) mean in the Bible?
What’s the significance of that number?

Forty Days and Forty Nights

When I think of the number 40, my first thoughts turn to the flood.  When God judged sinful mankind and spared only Noah and his family, “rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights” (Gen 7:12) and so the 40 days are seen as a judgment of God.  Why 40 days?  It was when “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen 6:5-6) “So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them” (Gen 6:7). In this case, the number 40 seems to be associated with the judgment of God being carried out. Certainly the number 40 is to be taken literally as for how many days the rain came down, but I don’t believe it’s any coincidence that the number 40 was involved in the number of days as it was a judgment to mankind. (Genesis 7:4, 17, 8:6)


Marriage and Forty

Genesis 25:20 shows that “Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife” and “When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite to be his wife, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite” (Gen 26:34) so can you see a pattern? Did the law say that you cannot marry until 40?  No, it’s just that it seems that number does come up a lot in marriages in the Bible.


Times of Testing or Judgment

When Moses went up Mount Sinai, he was there for 40 days and nights (Exodus 24:18, 34:28, Deuteronomy 9:11, 9:18, 10:10, 9:25, Acts 7:30, Numbers 13:25, 14:34, Herews 3:9, 17) and the Israelites rebelled and made a golden calf. They failed to wait even 40 days for Moses to come down off the mountain and so they were tested but failed. In the case of Moses, where he fled Egypt for killing an Egyptian, he remained in the desert wilderness tending sheep for 40 years, after which God called Him to bring Israel out of Egyptian bondage. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years which is clearly seen as a judgment from God.
(Exodus 16:35, 24:18, 34:28, Joshua 5:6, Acts 7:36, Numbers 14:33, 32:13)


Moses’ Forty Day Fast

Exodus 34:27-28 “And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.”


Jesu's fast and Temptation

Matthew 4:1-3a “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him. (Mark 1:13, Luke 4:2)
”When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by the Devil, it was for 40 days and nights, the same number if days between Jesus death and His resurrection. In Jesus flogging it is believed that the Roman’s soldiers flogged or whipped Jesus much more than 40 lashes as the Old Testament law allowed (Deut 25:3)


Moses (Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 9:9, 18)

 There was also the account where the spies went into the Promised Land to see what it was like and who was there and they were gone 40 days and nights and because Israel refused to cross over, God said it would be “According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure” (Num 14:34).  Even though Israel was disobedient, in the same 40 year period that they wandered about in the wilderness, God said “For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows you’re going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing” (Deut 2:7) so God was faithful (of course!), even when Israel wasn’t.

Forty Years of Rest

During the times of the judges, before there was a king in Israel, there were judges who would rule but would the nation would eventually fall into idolatry.  Each time they did, God sent another nation to afflict them with the purpose being that they would repent and turn back to Him. It was like a cycle; prosperity and proper worship; prosperity and forgetting God; prosperity and worshiping idols; disaster and captivity and then they would repent and God would bring them back from their afflictions and the land would have rest for 40 years.  This happened over and over again (Judges 3:11, 5:31, 8:28 ) and every time they cried out to God and again, He would deliver them and give them 40 years of rest.

Conclusion

Whatever the number 40 symbolizes in the Bible, the purpose of testing is to humble us and to show us how strong or weak our faith is.  God doesn’t test our faith for Him to know rather for us to know. We’ll have times of trials, tests, sufferings, and we may be wandering in a spiritual wilderness for a time, but rest is coming; the true rest that is found when we place our trust in Christ Jesus.


Other Significant Events and the number Forty

The Holy Spirit Acts 1:3

Forty stripes was the maximum number allowed for anyone to be punished (Duet 25:3).

Moses sent spies into the Promised Land and they were there for forty days and forty nights before returning to give their report about the land (Numbers 13:25, 14:34)

 The prophet Elijah went forty days and nights without food or water while on Mount Horeb. (1Kings19:8)

Jesus appeared for forty days after His resurrection from the dead and the disciples and many others witnessed His appearance.

When Israel disobeyed God, He gave them over to their enemies for forty years (Judges 13:1).

King Saul reigned over Israel for forty years (Acts 13:21) as did David (2 Samuel 5:4, 1 Kings 2:11), Solomon (2Chronicles 9:30, 1 Kings 11:42), Joash (2Chronicles 24:1).

Eli judge for 40years 1Samuel 4:18

The holy place of the temple was forty cubits long (1 Kings 6:17).

Ezekiel bore the evil of the house of Judah for forty days (Ezk 4:6).

The number forty represents the number of one generation as with the children of Israel who died in the Wilderness for their disobedience to the Lord.

Isaac and Jacob were both forty years old when they married (Genesis 25:20, 26:34).

The Egyptians were punished for 40 years (Genesis 50:3, Ezekiel:29:11-13)

Jonah; Jonah 3:4