Jonah — the number of the name, the Torah page and the verse
The name Jonah in Hebrew letters is יונה. 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.
יונה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is יונה. “Dove.” The prophet sent to Nineveh who spent three days inside the fish; the book of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 71 — the same as the Torah word מלא, “to fill or”. That number points to Torah page 71 of 354 — in the portion Miketz. What that portion is about: Pharaoh's dreams of seven cows and seven ears; Joseph rules Egypt; the brothers come for grain; the cup in Benjamin's sack. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 33:14. 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 יונה gives 71.
71
The number 71 is the Torah word מלא — «to fill or» (Genesis 1:22).
The number 71, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 71 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). These are its opening words:
וטבות והנה שבע שבלים דקות ושדופת קדים צמחות …
The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 41:5:
וַיִּישָׁן וַיַּחֲלֹם שֵׁנִית וְהִנֵּה שֶׁבַע שִׁבֳּלִים עֹלוֹת בְּקָנֶה אֶחָד בְּרִיאוֹת וְטֹבוֹת
And he slept and dreamed a second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.
This is from the portion Miketz. What it is about: Pharaoh's dreams of seven cows and seven ears; Joseph rules Egypt; the brothers come for grain; the cup in Benjamin's sack.
The same number, 71, is given by these biblical names:
יונה · זנוח · מיכא · הגלגל
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) — 71. A Torah word with the same number is מלא — “to fill or” (Genesis 1:22).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 17. A Torah word with the same number is טוב — “good” (Genesis 1:4).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 35. A Torah word with the same number is גבל — “to twist as arope” (Exodus 19:12).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 286.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 2661.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 163. A Torah word with the same number is אצבע — “something to sieze with, i.e. a finger” (Exodus 8:15).
The word that comes out is מפטצ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 219. A Torah word with the same number is טהרה — “ceremonial purification” (Leviticus 12:4).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 144. A Torah word with the same number is קדם — “the front, of place” (Genesis 2:8).
The number 71 appears in the classical books 13 times across 11 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 יונה appears in the Torah as a word 8 times. The first time is Genesis 8:8. Another 7 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 יונה these are י and ה. The Pentateuch has 10 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 33:14:
יעבר נא אדני לפני עבדו ואני אתנהלה לאטי לרגל המלאכה אשר לפני ולרגל הילדים עד אשר אבא אל אדני שעירה
This is from the portion Vayishlach. What it is about: Wrestling with the angel and the name Israel; the meeting with Esau; Dinah in Shechem; the birth of Benjamin and Rachel's death.
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) — 71. A Torah word with the same number is מלא — “to fill or” (Genesis 1:22).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 17. A Torah word with the same number is טוב — “good” (Genesis 1:4).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 35. A Torah word with the same number is גבל — “to twist as arope” (Exodus 19:12).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 286.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 2661.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 163. A Torah word with the same number is אצבע — “something to sieze with, i.e. a finger” (Exodus 8:15).
The word that comes out is מפטצ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 219. A Torah word with the same number is טהרה — “ceremonial purification” (Leviticus 12:4).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 144. A Torah word with the same number is קדם — “the front, of place” (Genesis 2:8).
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 71
Other names
Jesus · Jethro · Joao · Job · Joel · John · Jonathan · Jose · Joseph · Joshua · Josiah · Joze · 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