Hebrew Gematria: Mispar Hechrachi, Gadol & Katan

Hebrew gematria is the original gematria: in the Hebrew alef-bet every letter is also a numeral, so every written word is already a number. Alef through tet count 1-9, yod through tsadi count 10-90, and qof through tav count 100-400. No values need to be assigned: the numbers are part of the writing system itself, and rabbinic tradition lists gematria among the classical methods of Torah interpretation.

Mispar Hechrachi - the standard value

The default cipher is Mispar Hechrachi ("absolute value"), the system our Hebrew Standard cipher page tabulates in full. The five letters with final forms (kaf, mem, nun, pe, tsadi) keep their base values when they close a word. Some well-known examples:

חי (chai, "life") - chet 8 + yod 10:

Because chai = 18, charitable gifts in Jewish custom traditionally come in multiples of eighteen. The four-letter divine name יהוה sums to 26, and שלום (shalom, "peace") to 376.

Mispar Gadol and Mispar Katan

Mispar Gadol ("great value") continues the sequence through the five final letter forms - final kaf 500 through final tsadi 900 - completing a full 1-900 scale, so a word ending in a final letter can have a very different value: see the Gadol table. Mispar Katan ("small value") reduces every letter to a single digit 1-9, the Hebrew analogue of Full Reduction - see the Katan table. Dozens of further variants exist in Kabbalistic literature (squared values, letter-name values, positional values), but Hechrachi, Gadol, and Katan cover nearly all everyday use.

Gematria in Jewish tradition

Gematria appears throughout classical commentary. A well-known example links Jacob's ladder (סלם, 130) with Sinai (סיני, 130); another connects wine (יין, 70) and secret (סוד, 70) - "when wine goes in, secret comes out." Medieval Kabbalah, especially the school of Abraham Abulafia, developed systematic letter-number methods, and gematria is still used in Hasidic teaching today. The well-known biblical number puzzles - including the 666 of Revelation, usually solved as the Hebrew spelling of Nero Caesar - are covered in Gematria and the Bible.

Calculating Hebrew gematria

Type Hebrew directly into the calculator - with or without vowel points (niqqud is ignored) - and the three Hebrew ciphers compute automatically, alongside a database search for matching values. For the general method and the English systems based on this one, see how to calculate gematria and English gematria, or start from the top with What is Gematria?