Nathan — the number of the name, the Torah page and the verse
The name Nathan in Hebrew letters is נתן. 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.
נתן
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is נתן. “He gave.” The prophet at David’s court who rebuked the king after Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 500 — the same as the Torah word נתן, “to give, used with greatest latitude of…”. That number points to Torah page 146 of 354 — in the portion Ki Tisa. What that portion is about: The half-shekel for the census; the golden calf and the broken tablets; the thirteen attributes of mercy; the second tablets. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Leviticus 13:9. 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 נתן gives 500.
500
The number 500 is the Torah word נתן — «to give, used with greatest latitude of…» (Genesis 1:17).
Five hundred is final kaf in the extended count; “the tree of life is a five-hundred-year journey” (Genesis Rabbah 15:6).
The number 500, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 146 in the book of Shmot (Exodus). These are its opening words:
אורי בן חור למטה יהודה ואמלא אתו רוח …
The verse this place falls on is Shmot (Exodus) 31:2:
רְאֵה קָרָאתִי בְשֵׁם בְּצַלְאֵל בֶּן־אוּרִי בֶן־חוּר לְמַטֵּה יְהוּדָה
'See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah;
This is from the portion Ki Tisa. What it is about: The half-shekel for the census; the golden calf and the broken tablets; the thirteen attributes of mercy; the second tablets.
The same number, 500, is given by these biblical names:
נתן · תימן · שר · מתני
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) — 1150.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 14. A Torah word with the same number is יד — “a hand” (Genesis 3:22).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 50. A Torah word with the same number is כל — “the whole” (Genesis 1:21).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1885.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 165000.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1000.
The word that comes out is טאט. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 19. A Torah word with the same number is גוי — “a foreign nation” (Genesis 10:5).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 618.
The number 500 appears in the classical books 17 times across 8 works. The earliest mention is ספר קרניים (~1400).
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 נתן appears in the Torah as a word 109 times. The first time is Genesis 9:12. Another 39 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 נתן these are נ and נ. The Pentateuch has 3 such verses. The first of them is Leviticus 13:9:
נגע צרעת כי תהיה באדם והובא אל הכהן
This is from the portion Tazria. What it is about: The woman after childbirth; the laws of tzaraat on skin and garments — the signs and the priest's inspection.
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) — 1150.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 14. A Torah word with the same number is יד — “a hand” (Genesis 3:22).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 50. A Torah word with the same number is כל — “the whole” (Genesis 1:21).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1885.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 165000.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1000.
The word that comes out is טאט. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 19. A Torah word with the same number is גוי — “a foreign nation” (Genesis 10:5).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 618.
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 146
Other names
Moses · Nadezhda · Nahum · Naomi · Naphtali · Natalia · Nathanael · Nechama · Nehemiah · Neta · Nicole · Nikita · 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