Thursday, August 19, 2021

Triple numbers, and a Biden, in Numbers

For a month or two now, I keep running into triple repdigits: 111, 222, 333, 444, etc. It seems that every time I check the time on my phone, it's always exactly 2:22 or 3:33, and when I do the shopping, the totals keep coming out to $555 or $666.

I've also been listening to the Bible -- a first for me, as I don't think I've ever listened to an audiobook in my life. One side effect has been mishearing things which I would never have misread; for example, I recently posted about mishearing "Esau came" as "he saw Cain." Today I was listening to the beginning of Numbers -- a boring list of names and numbers that didn't exactly engage my full attention -- when I suddenly thought I heard the name Biden. I paused the app and checked what verse it was reading. It was Number 1:11, which reads:

Of Benjamin; Abidan the son of Gideoni.

I probably would have read that name as "Abby-dan," but the reader I was listening to pronounced it as "a Biden." I noted the triple repdigit in the reference (1:11) and the coincidental similarity to the Antipresident's name, and I kept listening.

A few minutes later, I heard Biden again. This time, it was Numbers 2:22.

Then the tribe of Benjamin: and the captain of the sons of Benjamin shall be Abidan the son of Gideoni.

Basically the same verse, and also a triple repdigit. So that was weird. Then I thought, randomly, "Hey, I wonder what Numbers 11:1 says." I'm not sure why that particular reference came to mind, instead of 3:33 or something, but it did. I looked it up.

And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.

This caught my attention, in the context of Numbers 1:11 and 2:22, because of a persistent mental image I have of Joe Biden spontaneously combusting. Not sure what any of this means, if anything, but I note it.

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