The Name at skip 8 in Leviticus

The observation

Leviticus begins with the word ויקרא. Its second letter is a י, the first י of the book. From there, every 8th letter spells the four letters of the Name. All four fall within Leviticus 1:1, and the last stands in the word מאהל. It is short enough to check by hand in about a minute, counting eight letters at a time through one verse.

The story is often given a shape. Genesis and Exodus read תורה forward, as if pointing to the middle book. Numbers and Deuteronomy read it backward, pointing back. In the middle stands the Name. It is told with the observations of Rabbi Weissmandl. Each piece can be measured separately, and this entry measures one.

The Name is searched on its true letters. Our display follows your reverent setting, on by default. We never write it in English letters.

The measurement

Three of the most common letters in the Torah make up the Name: י, ו and ה. Together with א, they are the top four. That is why chance alone expects more than 4 sequences at a single skip in a short book. Seven is a little above that, and about 1 in 7 shuffled texts does as well.

Other skips in Leviticus give the same picture. Forward, skips 5 and 7 also give 7, skip 15 gives 7, and skip 18 gives 8. So skip 8 is not unusual within the book.

The other six sequences start at Leviticus 7:31, 11:45, 13:53, 21:15, 24:23 and 26:32. The same search in the other books gives 10 in Genesis (chance alone 6.3), 8 in Exodus (5.9), 5 in Numbers (4.8) and 5 in Deuteronomy (5.2). Leviticus is the shortest of the five, and its count is in line with the others once you allow for that.

The start and the span

Two things are more striking than the count. The sequence starts at the first י of the book. And the whole thing fits in the first verse. From that first י, 8 is the only skip from 2 to 1,000 that spells the Name, and chance alone gives about 1.1 over that range. So one such skip is what you would expect. That it should be a small one is less likely, but there is no fair way to price "small" after the fact.

This is the general trouble with starts and shapes. The eye picks a feature and the mind treats it as if it had been the question all along. The skip of 8 has no special reason attached to it in the sources we have seen, and the entry stands on what it is: a short sequence at a small skip with common letters.

How to read it

This entry is the clearest teaching case in the gallery. If you heard that the Name is spelled at skip 8 from the start of Leviticus, it sounds remarkable. If you then learn that a skip like this produces such a sequence 4 or 5 times by chance in a book this length, you can decide how remarkable it is. The two numbers belong together, and that is why they always travel together here.

In the laboratory, tap the first letter to open Leviticus 1:1 with the letter marked and the JPS 1917 English beside it. From there, run the same search over the other four books and compare.