The name Shelah in Hebrew letters is שלח. 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.
שלח
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is שלח. A Tanakh name: a postdiluvian patriarch (first in Genesis 10:24; 9 mentions in the Tanakh). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 338 — the same as the Torah word שלח, “to send”. That number points to Torah page 338 of 354 — in the portion Ki Tavo. What that portion is about: “When you enter”: the first fruits and the declaration; the stones on Mount Ebal; blessings and admonitions. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 7:9. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Shelah” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: שלח. A name from the Tanakh — its Tanakh spelling is used. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
Adding up the letters of the name שלח gives 338.
338
The number 338 is the Torah word שלח — «to send» (Genesis 3:22).
And HaShem hath avouched thee this day to be His own treasure, as He hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all His commandments;
This is from the portion Ki Tavo. What it is about: “When you enter”: the first fruits and the declaration; the stones on Mount Ebal; blessings and admonitions.
Other 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) — 338. A Torah word with the same number is שלח — “to send” (Genesis 3:22).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 14. A Torah word with the same number is יד — “hand” (Genesis 3:22).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 41. A Torah word with the same number is אם — “if” (Genesis 4:7).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1236.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 90964.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 968.
The letters that come out are בכס — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 82. A Torah word with the same number is לבן — “Laban, brother of Rebekah” (Genesis 24:29).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 852. A Torah word with the same number is בתכלת — “in blue” (Exodus 35:35).
The number 338 appears in the classical books 9 times across 4 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
Every letter of the name explained, the words and namesakes with references, the Hebrew date, the letter and tribe of the month, day 861 of your life (±1), the psalm by age, the attestations from the classical books — a PDF sent to your email.
The number of the day, every morning
Every date has a number too. Once a year it will match the number of your name — 338. The channel posts one number a day, one verse and the Torah page it lands on. Nothing after it, no mailing list.
Hebrew is written from right to left. שלח has 3 letters: ש Shin, ל Lamed, ח Chet. The first letter is Shin, the last is Chet.
For an engraving, a sign or a tattoo, show the spelling to someone who reads Hebrew: transliterating a name is a choice, not the only option.
The name שלח appears in the Torah as a word 40 times. The first time is Genesis 8:10. Another 18 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 שלח these are ש and ח. The Pentateuch has 2 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 7:9:
שנים שנים באו אל נח אל התבה זכר ונקבה כאשר צוה אלהים את נח
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.
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.
