The Number 18

Meaning and Symbology

• Symbolize those which did not want to receive the Name of Jesus, or who have received it, did not persevere.
• The significance of the number eighteen in the Bible comes from its symbolic meaning for bondage. After taking possession of the promised land, the children of Israel were in bondage to several nations and peoples before Saul was made king. Two of their enemies, Eglon the Moabite king and the Philistines (with the help of the people of Ammon) oppressed them for 18 years (Judges 3:12, 14, 10:7 – 8). God freed the Israelites from Eglon through Ehud (who would become one of Israel’s judges). He used Jephthah in the East and Samson in the South and West to free his people from the Ammonites and Philistines.
• For R. Allendy, it represents “the ratios of the Nirvana world 8 with the whole of the Cosmos 10. The Nirvana is dispersed in the Cosmos, in an apparent involution, by an act of solidarity and love – 1 + 8 = 9”. It would also constitute the realization of the love, the providence in action, 3 x 6 = 18.
• Four occulted numerologist it is an exponential factor of infinity, as a is the symbol for infinity. (10+8)
• According to Guy Tarade, it is the number of Jesus Christ.

In the Bible

Bible Occurrence

Other Religions

• The number 18 is in relation, in cabalistic numerology, with emotions, the secrets, the lie, the selfishness, the criminality, the destruction, the disposition of accidents, with the difficulties, the sickness, the danger.
• It is told that Jesus began to realize Who and what he was at eighteen years old whereas energies of the Universal Conscience of Christ started to circulate in Him.
• The Virgin Mary was often adorned by eighteen seraphs when she was elevated to the sky to be placed at the right of his Son on the throne of the Holy Trinity, according to visions of Mary Agreda.
• In Lourdes, in 1858, the Virgin appears eighteen times.
• The eighteen psalms which wrote Solomon in the Psalms of Solomon and the eighteen Blessings of the prayer of Jews found in the “Shermone-Esre”, writings of the library of Qumran.
• The card 18 in the Tarot corresponds to “the moon”.
• The Buddhist literature mentions the eighteen conditions of a Buddha.
• The Bhagavad-Gita, treaty of Yoga, has eighteen chapters.
• The Bonzes used for their prayers a small rosary having 18 grains.
• The Hebrew word for “life” is חי (chai), which has a numerical value of 18. Consequently, the custom has arisen in Jewish circles to give donations and monetary gifts in multiples of 18 as an expression of blessing for a long life.
• In Judaism, in the Talmud; Pirkei Avot (5:25), Rabbi Yehudah ben Teime gives the age of 18 as the appropriate age to get married (“Ben shmonah esra lechupah”, at eighteen years old to the Chupah (marriage canopy)). (See Coming of age, Age of majority).
• Shemoneh Esrei (sh’MOH-nuh ES-ray) is a prayer that is the center of any Jewish religious service. Its name means “eighteen”. The prayer is also known as the Amidah.
• A year counted eighteen months, in the religious calendar Maya, composed of twenty days each one and giving a rest of 5 days.
• The souls of the Just make to go up eighteen perfume columns, and forty-nine different odors rise each day until the area called Eden.
• There are 18 chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, which is contained in the Mahabharata, which has 18 books. The Kurukshetra War which the epic depicts is between 18 armies (11 on the Kuru side, 7 on the Pandava). The war itself lasts for 18 days. In the other Hindu epic, the Ramayana, the war between Rama and the demons also lasted 18 days.
• The Hindu epic Mahabharata has eighteen sections, involves eighteen armies and is about a war fought over eighteen days.
• In the Chinese mythos, Hell has 18 levels.

• We find eighteen sounds in the Greek musical teaching.
• The alphabet of the trees used by the druids for divinatory uses had eighteen letters, each letter deriving its name from the tree of which it is the initial. Composed of 5 vowels and 13 consonants, it formed a seasonal magic calendar of trees.
• Some modern astronomers begin to believe that our Sun could turn itself around the Sirius star, as thought elsewhere the ancient Sumerian people, with a revolution period of eight hundred thousand years. During this period, the Earth would be eighteen times exactly aligned with the Sun and Sirius.
• Anniversary of marriage: tin weddings.
• The number of chapters into which James Joyce’s epic novel Ulysses is divided.
• The number of wheels on the most common type of North American tractor-trailer truck, 18-wheelers.
• DVD-18 is double-sided, double-layered DVD format.
• A Canon error message, see E18 error.
• 18th Street gang, a Hispanic American gang.
• In Chinese folklore, the Shaolin temple had a group of 18 bronze Monks. Initiates could only be considered full graduates of Shaolin martial arts if they could defeat them in combat.
• Among Neo-Nazi, 18 is the numerical sign for Adolf Hitler (1 standing for A and 8 standing for H). It is also the number for the UK-based terrorist group Combat 18.
• In Ancient Roman custom, the number 18 can symbolize a blood relative.
• Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 was originally named Catch-18 because of the Hebrew meaning of the number but was amended to the published title to avoid confusion with another war novel, Mila 18.