I have written on the past on the meanings of numbers in the Torah: 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and here, as well as numerous explorations of the number 10 – e.g. here and here. Each number has symbolic meaning, underpinning and reinforcing the key guidelines of the Torah, teaching us how to strive toward holiness.
So it seems we skipped the number 6. Which is really one of the easiest numbers. Here goes:
First off the world – the physical world – is made in 6 days.
And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, day six.
The 7th day completes creation, but it includes the Sabbath day, the element of spirituality. G-d finished creating the physical world in 6 days, but his job was not done until the end of the 7th.
The difference between six and seven is, of course, One. G-d. The spiritual force in our world that cannot be measured using any physical tools we possess. But a world that does not have G-d in it is a world that can only recognize the physical world, as made in 6 days.
That is it!
Everything else is just examples and commentary. For those who would like those examples anyway, keep reading!
The next incidence of the number “6” in the text is the Flood:
Noah was six hundred years old when the Flood came, waters upon the earth.
Consider that the Flood is really a remake of the world, a world that, because it lacked any desire to improve humanity beyond Might Makes Right animalism, or any connection to G-d, was a world that totally lacked the spiritual component. And the end of this period of 6, unlike the 6 days of Creation, G-d does not judge the world “very good.” Instead he judges it in desperate need of a thorough flushing. Left to our own devices, man does not discover spiritualism on our own. Instead, we revert to our physical selves. The world needs the spiritual redo – the Sabbath. But because the 6 days had been so badly misspent by mankind, the spiritual element, the 7th element, forced a complete cleansing and a restart.
Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
I think the inclusion of the number “6” here is shared in the text simply because there was a gap. The number “8” is the number of connection with the divine. And “6” is the number of physicality. It is a hint that Ishmael may not have been a “complete” creation. He was a physical person – even before he is born, G-d says to Hagar: “And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”
Indeed, Ishmael’s blessings remain blessings of physicality:
As for Ishmael, I have heeded you. I hereby bless him. I will make him fertile and exceedingly numerous. He shall be the father of twelve [6, twice over] chieftains, and I will make of him a great nation.
Similarly, Avraham may have Ishmael and Isaac, but he also had 6 other sons!
Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.
Six more sons! And none of them had connections to the divine. They were solely physical, sons that Avraham could (and did) send away, so as not to interfere with Isaac, the one son among eight who had a spiritual connection to G-d.
Jacob serves Lavan. When he summarizes his labors, he does it as follows:
Of the twenty years that I spent in your household, I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flocks.
7 years for each complete daughter. But animals lack souls; they only are numbered in sixes.
Egypt is where the number “6” is most common. Egypt was physicality incarnate; even its religions were deeply pagan, only reflecting the physical forces that could be perceived by people. So those who so far as touched Egypt were affected by it. That is why the Torah tells us the number of Jews who went down to Egypt using the language that it does:
All the persons who came with Yaakov to Egypt, those going out from his loins, aside from the wives of Yaakov’s sons: all the persons: sixty-six.
The Torah could have counted Jacob himself, and made it 67. Or it did not need to give the number at all! But we are learning something here: the number “6” (especially repeated as in this case), is about the physical world. We could learn that the Jews became more physically focused as they went down to Egypt. Or we could learn that their bodies descended, while their souls tried to stay removed; these answers are not exclusive.
But we do know that when the Jews leave Egypt, they are not spiritual creatures. They are a thoughtless mob, guided by a divine hand. Which may explain why the Torah gives us the number here again.
The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot strong, aside from noncombatants.
Assimilation is indictaed by the mirrored use of this number: Those 600,000 men are matched by Pharaoh, characterized with the number of Egypt: 6.
[Pharoah] took six hundred of his picked chariots, and the rest of the chariots of Egypt, with officers in all of them.
Of course, the number “6” appears later in the text as well:
“Six days you shall gather it; on the seventh day, the sabbath, there will be none.”
The manna is a 6-day food. It meets the physical needs of a person. But on Sabbath not only do we not gather it, but it is not available to be gathered! G-d is trying to teach us that man must not live by bread alone: we need a spiritual connection, reflection, relationships. We need the Sabbath day in order to be complete.
The same pattern is repeated for the 6 years of agriculture, followed by the 7th year, a Sabbath for the land. And for a Jewish servant, who works 6 years, but goes free on the 7th 6 is the number of physicality.
Similarly, the breastplate of the High Priest is to unify the people:
And thou shalt take two shoham stones, and engrave on them the names of the children of Yisra᾽el: six of their names on one stone, and the other six names on the other stone, according to their birth.
The 7th and 8th elements are found elsewhere – a core purpose of the tabernacle and its service to bring the people and G-d together. So once again, the number “6” is the physical component in what, once the spiritual element – the number representing the unity of G-d – is added, completes at 7 or 8.
Simple!