聖書における「38」に意味はない――しかし、それは二つの長い待ち時間を刻んでいる

Thirty-eight has no symbolic meaning in Scripture. But it turns up twice, in two very different books, attached to exactly the same thing: a long wait that nobody chose. Thirty-eight years in the wilderness Moses, recounting the journey, gives the figure plainly: Thirty-eight years passed from the time we left Kadesh Barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley. By then, that entire generation of fighting men had perished from the camp. (Deuteronomy 2:14) The forty years of wandering are famous.…