Joel — the number of the name, the Torah page and the verse
The name Joel in Hebrew letters is יואל. 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.
יואל
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is יואל. “The Lord is God.” The prophet whose book is among the Twelve Minor Prophets. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 47 — the same as the Torah word אולי, “if not”. That number points to Torah page 47 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 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 יואל gives 47.
47
The number 47 is the Torah word אולי — «if not» (Genesis 16:2).
The number 47, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 47 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). These are its opening words:
ההוא בית אל ואולם לוז שם העיר לראשנה …
The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 28:19:
וַיִּקְרָא אֶת־שֵׁם־הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא בֵּית־אֵל וְאוּלָם לוּז שֵׁם־הָעִיר לָרִאשֹׁנָה
And he called the name of that place Beth-el, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.
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, 47, is given by these biblical names:
יואל · אולי · חלדה · במה
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) — 47. A Torah word with the same number is אולי — “if not” (Genesis 16:2).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 11. A Torah word with the same number is חג — “a festival, or a victim therefor” (Exodus 10:9).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 29. A Torah word with the same number is דכה — “mutilated” (Deuteronomy 23:2).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 182. A Torah word with the same number is יעקב — “Jaakob, the Israelitish patriarch” (Genesis 25:26).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 1037.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 90. A Torah word with the same number is מן — “a part of” (Genesis 2:6).
The word that comes out is מפתכ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 540. A Torah word with the same number is שמר — “to hedge about” (Genesis 2:15).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 217. A Torah word with the same number is אורי — “Uri, the name of three Israelites” (Exodus 31:2).
The number 47 appears in the classical books 6 times across 6 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 יואל does not stand as a separate word in the Torah, but appears 1 time with prefixes — first in Exodus 2:21.
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 יואל 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) — 47. A Torah word with the same number is אולי — “if not” (Genesis 16:2).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 11. A Torah word with the same number is חג — “a festival, or a victim therefor” (Exodus 10:9).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 29. A Torah word with the same number is דכה — “mutilated” (Deuteronomy 23:2).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 182. A Torah word with the same number is יעקב — “Jaakob, the Israelitish patriarch” (Genesis 25:26).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 1037.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 90. A Torah word with the same number is מן — “a part of” (Genesis 2:6).
The word that comes out is מפתכ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 540. A Torah word with the same number is שמר — “to hedge about” (Genesis 2:15).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 217. A Torah word with the same number is אורי — “Uri, the name of three Israelites” (Exodus 31:2).
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 47
Other names
Jeremiah · Jesse · Jesus · Jethro · Joao · Job · John · Jonah · Jonathan · Jose · Joseph · Joshua · 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