Rav Fish on the "6000 Verses" in the Torah for 6000 Years

Rav Fish this week has an absolutely amazing essay on how each verse in the Torah corresponds to a year.  He goes through quite a few verses and their corresponding year and shows how they match.  Sometimes, he's off by a bit, but it's still very interesting.

He even goes into future years too!  This goes according to his Shita of what he believes will occur during those years.

The gemara in Kiddushin 30a says that there are 5888 verses in the Torah.  The Mesoret Hashas there gives 2 other figures: 5845 and 5842.  These latter 2 figures depend on whether one reads the Ten Commandments as printed in Humashim (13 verses), using Ta'am Tahton (12 verses), or using Ta'am Elyon (9 verses).  It also depends on whether Bereishit 35:22 is divided in half or not.  The 5888 figure can be arrived at if we use the 5845 figure and count each verse in Ha'azinu as 2 verses.

So, how do we get to 6000 verses?  The Roke'ah gives an explanation that really, in Shamayim, there are 6000 verses.  Moshe Rabbeinu reached the 49th gate (ותחסרהו מעט מאלקים) and only reached the 50th gate on the last day of his life, whereby he was able to include the last 8 verses.  Each gate contained 120 verses, so 49x120 = 5880, plus the last 8 verses from the 50th gate = 5888.

Many of the examples he cited came from either the book "Matbe'a Shel Avraham" or Rav A. Kalil.

One example he gave is that in the year 4000 begins the "Days of Mashiah", who is from the tribe of Yehuda.  The 4000th verse of the Torah is וַיִּסַּע דֶּגֶל מַחֲנֵה בְנֵי-יְהוּדָה, בָּרִאשֹׁנָה--לְצִבְאֹתָם; וְעַל-צְבָאוֹ--נַחְשׁוֹן, בֶּן-עַמִּינָדָב.

Another example is that in 4895, the Rambam - Rav Moshe ben Maimon - was born.  The 4895th verse of the Torah is הוֹאִיל מֹשֶׁה, בֵּאֵר אֶת-הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת לֵאמֹר, referring to the Mishneh Torah (Sefer Devarim), which is the same name the Rambam used for his magnum opus.

For Hebrew speakers, it's very much worth seeing all the connections made.  Again, some of the years are a little bit off, but not by much.  It's all very interesting.