Ishmael — the number of the name, the Torah page and the verse
The name Ishmael in Hebrew letters is ישמעאל. 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.
ישמעאל
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is ישמעאל. “God will hear” (Genesis 16:11). Son of Abraham and Hagar. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 451 — the same as the Torah word ישמעאל, “Jishmael, the name of Abraham's oldest son, and…”. That number points to Torah page 97 of 354 — in the portion Shemot. What that portion is about: Slavery in Egypt; Moses in the basket on the Nile; the burning bush and the Name; the first audience with Pharaoh. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Deuteronomy 1:38. 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 ישמעאל gives 451.
451
The number 451 is the Torah word ישמעאל — «Jishmael, the name of Abraham's oldest son, and…» (Genesis 16:11).
The number 451, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 97 in the book of Shmot (Exodus). These are its opening words:
ואנכי אהיה עם פיך ועם פיהו והוריתי אתכם …
The verse this place falls on is Shmot (Exodus) 4:15:
וְדִבַּרְתָּ אֵלָיו וְשַׂמְתָּ אֶת־הַדְּבָרִים בְּפִיו וְאָנֹכִי אֶהְיֶה עִם־פִּיךָ וְעִם־פִּיהוּ וְהוֹרֵיתִי אֶתְכֶם אֵת אֲשֶׁר תַּעֲשׂוּן
And thou shalt speak unto him, and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do.
This is from the portion Shemot. What it is about: Slavery in Egypt; Moses in the basket on the Nile; the burning bush and the Name; the first audience with Pharaoh.
The same number, 451, is given by these biblical names:
ישמעאל · אלישמע · תימא · אמתי
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) — 451. A Torah word with the same number is ישמעאל — “Jishmael, the name of Abraham's oldest son, and…” (Genesis 16:11).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 19. A Torah word with the same number is גוי — “a foreign nation” (Genesis 10:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 73. A Torah word with the same number is גמל — “a camel” (Genesis 12:16).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1726.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 97501.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1962.
The word that comes out is מביזתכ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 479.
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 775.
The number 451 appears in the classical books 6 times across 4 works. The earliest mention is מדרש לפירושים (~1450?).
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 ישמעאל appears in the Torah as a word 13 times. The first time is Genesis 16:11. Another 4 times it stands with prefixes — “and”, “in”, “the”.
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 ישמעאל these are י and ל. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Deuteronomy 1:38:
יהושע בן נון העמד לפניך הוא יבא שמה אתו חזק כי הוא ינחלנה את ישראל
This is from the portion Devarim. What it is about: Moses begins his address in the plains of Moab: judges, spies, forty years of wandering, the victories over Sihon and Og.
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) — 451. A Torah word with the same number is ישמעאל — “Jishmael, the name of Abraham's oldest son, and…” (Genesis 16:11).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 19. A Torah word with the same number is גוי — “a foreign nation” (Genesis 10:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 73. A Torah word with the same number is גמל — “a camel” (Genesis 12:16).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1726.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 97501.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1962.
The word that comes out is מביזתכ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 479.
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 775.
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 97
Other names
Igor · Ilya · Irina · Isaac · Isabel · Isaiah · Issachar · Itai · Jack · Jacob · Jael · Javier · 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