Hebrew Alphabet Gematria Chart

Units, tens, hundreds

The Hebrew alphabet is a numeral system in three tiers: the first nine letters are 1–9, the next nine are 10–90, and the last four are 100–400.

That structure is why 22 letters reach only 400. Greek, with 27 numeral signs, reaches 900; Agrippa padded the Latin alphabet to 27 for the same reason. Hebrew tradition’s answer to the gap is Mispar Gadol, which presses the five final forms into service as 500–900 and so completes a 27-sign system^{[2] Source: Gematria}. In everyday number-writing, however, values above 400 are formed by adding letters (500 = ת״ק, 400 + 100), and the final forms are not used as numerals.

The five final letters

Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pe and Tsadi change shape at the end of a word — ך ם ן ף ץ — a purely graphic convention like the long and short s of older English printing. For gematria the rule is simple: in the standard, ordinal and reduced methods a final letter is worth exactly what its ordinary form is worth. Only Mispar Gadol treats the finals as separate numerals (500, 600, 700, 800, 900).

The practical consequence is that any Hebrew word ending in one of these five letters has two “correct” values depending on method — שלום is 376 or 936 — and a source that does not say which it means has left the number ambiguous. A word with no final letter is the same in both.

How Hebrew writes numbers

The same values that power gematria are still used to write numbers — chapter and verse numbers, dates on the Hebrew calendar, the pages of the Talmud^{[1] Source: Hebrew numerals}. The conventions:

• Letters are written largest first, right to left, and added: 12 = י״ב (10 + 2), 248 = רמ״ח (200 + 40 + 8).
• A double stroke (gershayim ״) goes before the last letter of a multi-letter number; a single stroke (geresh ׳) follows a single-letter number: 5 = ה׳.
• 15 and 16 are written ט״ו (9 + 6) and ט״ז (9 + 7), not י״ה and י״ו, to avoid spelling forms of the divine name.
• Thousands are marked with a geresh after the thousands letter, and in dates are often dropped: the year 5784 is ה׳תשפ״ד or simply תשפ״ד.
• Combinations that would spell an unwanted word are rearranged: 298 is written רח״צ rather than רצ״ח (“murder”).

None of this changes a letter’s value; it is worth knowing because a number seen in a Hebrew text is itself a small piece of gematria, and because the ט״ו convention is a reminder that Hebrew writers have always been alert to what letter-numbers spell.

The four methods on this chart

Standard — Mispar Hechrachi

The tiered values 1–400; finals equal their base letter. The method behind Eliezer = 318 (Nedarim 32a)^{[3] Source: Nedarim 32a} and nearly every classical example.

Gadol

Standard, with finals as 500–900.

Ordinal — Mispar Siduri

Position in the alphabet, 1–22.

Reduced — Mispar Katan

Standard value with zeros removed, 1–9.

All four are computed at once on the Hebrew calculator, which also has an on-screen keyboard; their sources and disagreements are on the methodology page.