five: the cardinal number 5
This is simply the Hebrew word for the number five, used the way English uses "five": to count people, animals, objects, years, and measurements. It appears in two closely related forms, one used when counting masculine things and one when counting feminine things, but both mean exactly the same number. Out of more than three hundred appearances, the overwhelming majority are plain counting: five cities, five rams, five shekels, a span of five cubits, an age of five years.
Like any number, it also turns up inside larger figures (twenty-five, a hundred and five, five hundred, five thousand) and in dates and tallies throughout the law, the census lists, and the temple records. None of this changes its meaning. A number word does not gain extra senses from the things it counts.
Readers sometimes look for hidden symbolism in biblical numbers, and five does occasionally fall into memorable groupings (the five books of Moses, David's five smooth stones, five wise and five foolish companions in a later parable). But the word itself carries no built-in symbolic weight. Where a passage means something by a count of five, that meaning comes from the scene, not from the number word.