Elijah — the number of the name, the Torah page and the verse
The name Elijah in Hebrew letters is אליהו. Below: how its number adds up, which page of the Torah it falls on and what verse stands there. Everything is computed, nothing is guessed.
אליהו
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אליהו. “My God is the Lord.” The prophet of King Ahab’s time, taken up in a chariot of fire; a cup is set for him at the Passover table. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 52 — the same as the Torah word בן, “a son”. That number points to Torah page 52 of 354 — in the portion Vayetzei. What that portion is about: The dream of the ladder to heaven; Jacob with Laban: Leah and Rachel; eleven sons are born; the return. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 9:4. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. There are no predictions or judgments here — only the text of the Torah and arithmetic you can check.
Adding up the letters of the name אליהו gives 52.
52
The number 52 is the Torah word בן — «a son» (Genesis 3:16).
Ben, “son”, is 52; bakol, “in all”, is 52 (Genesis 24:1).
The number 52, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 52 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). These are its opening words:
אלהים להרע עמדי אם כה יאמר נקדים יהיה …
The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 31:7:
וַאֲבִיכֶן הֵתֶל בִּי וְהֶחֱלִף אֶת־מַשְׂכֻּרְתִּי עֲשֶׂרֶת מֹנִים וְלֹא־נְתָנוֹ אֱלֹהִים לְהָרַע עִמָּדִי
And your father hath mocked me, and changed my wages ten times; but G-d suffered him not to hurt me.
This is from the portion Vayetzei. What it is about: The dream of the ladder to heaven; Jacob with Laban: Leah and Rachel; eleven sons are born; the return.
The same number, 52, is given by these biblical names:
אליהו · בן · כלב · גדליה
Nine ways of counting
The tradition counts the same name in several ways. The main one is above: each letter is its number. The other eight are old and checkable too; each gives its own number, and many of them have a Torah word with the same number.
Final letters as 500–900 (mispar gadol) — 52. A Torah word with the same number is בן — “a son” (Genesis 3:16).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 16. A Torah word with the same number is אחז — “to seize” (Genesis 22:13).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 34. A Torah word with the same number is לבב — “the heart” (Genesis 20:5).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 197.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 1062.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 171. A Torah word with the same number is מעונה — “{an abode, of God” (Deuteronomy 33:27).
The word that comes out is תכמצפ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 630. A Torah word with the same number is שלש — “a descendant of the third degree, i.e. great…” (Genesis 50:23).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 223. A Torah word with the same number is חירה — “Chirah, an Adullamite” (Genesis 38:1).
The number 52 appears in the classical books 97 times across 53 works. The earliest mention is ילקוט שמעוני (~1260).
The full message
Every letter of the name explained, the words and namesakes with references, the Hebrew date, the letter and tribe of the month, the day 861 of your life, the psalm by age, the attestations from 834 works — a PDF built the moment you pay.
The name אליהו does not stand as a word in the Pentateuch — as with most names, including many Tanakh names from the later books.
The verse of your name
There is a custom: at the end of the prayer one says a Torah verse that begins with the first letter of one's name and ends with its last. For אליהו these are א and ו. The Pentateuch has 55 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 9:4:
אך בשר בנפשו דמו לא תאכלו
This is from the portion Noach. What it is about: The flood and the ark; the rainbow as a sign of the covenant; the tower of Babel; ten generations from Noah to Abraham.
Nine ways of counting
The tradition counts the same name in several ways. The main one is above: each letter is its number. The other eight are old and checkable too; each gives its own number, and many of them have a Torah word with the same number.
Final letters as 500–900 (mispar gadol) — 52. A Torah word with the same number is בן — “a son” (Genesis 3:16).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 16. A Torah word with the same number is אחז — “to seize” (Genesis 22:13).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 34. A Torah word with the same number is לבב — “the heart” (Genesis 20:5).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 197.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 1062.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 171. A Torah word with the same number is מעונה — “{an abode, of God” (Deuteronomy 33:27).
The word that comes out is תכמצפ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 630. A Torah word with the same number is שלש — “a descendant of the third degree, i.e. great…” (Genesis 50:23).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 223. A Torah word with the same number is חירה — “Chirah, an Adullamite” (Genesis 38:1).
Add a date of birth and the verse of meeting from that week's portion is added to the reading.
Compute with a date of birth The whole Torah page 52
Other names
Egor · Eleazar · Elena · Eli · Elia · Eliezer · Elisha · Elizabeth · Emily · Emma · Emmanuel · Enoch · All names
How it is counted
Each Hebrew letter has a number; a word's number is their sum (alef 1 … tav 400). The page is the remainder modulo 354: the Torah divided into 354 pages of 861 letters, as the lunar year has 354 days. Everything can be checked by hand.
Биньямин Пичхадзе, «Хумаш 354» (חומש 354), Бней-Брак, 2002 / התשס״ג · A calculation, not a prediction.
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (WLC), CC BY 4.0