ten thousand: the largest amount Hebrew names with a single word, used both as an exact figure and, in poetry, for a crowd too great to count
Hebrew counts in hundreds and thousands, and then it runs out of words. This is the last rung of the ladder, the largest amount the language names with a single word, and anything higher has to be built by stacking: thousands of ten thousands, ten thousand of ten thousands. That ceiling gives the word two lives. In a levy or a ledger it is the plain figure 10,000. In a song it means more than anyone could count, much the way English "a million" works in "I have told you a million times."
Most of its appearances sit inside a fixed poetic step: a thousand in the first line, ten thousand in the second. Israel's poets inherited that pattern from older Canaanite verse, where the same two numbers pair the same way, and inside it the higher number outbids the lower rather than adding to it. Saul is the one person in the Bible who takes the pattern literally, and the story treats his arithmetic as the mistake it is. The women's song was praise, not a body count.
The uncountable side of the word reaches in three directions worth watching:
- descendants promised past any hope of counting them
- an army or a nation so large the singer gives up numbering it
- the holy ones who come with God, a host nobody is expected to tally
Later Hebrew preferred a different form of the same root (רִבּוֹ) for this number and used it mostly for real arithmetic in post-exilic record keeping, while the older form kept its home in poetry. Its constant partner one rung below, in nearly every line where it appears, is the word for a thousand (אֶלֶף).
Nuances
Whether Ezekiel 16:7 uses this number at all. The received Hebrew opens the verse with the noun in an unusual comparison, read as "a myriad, like the growth of the field, I made you." Greenberg defends that text as it stands; Zimmerli and earlier critics read instead a verb meaning "grow," following the Greek translation.
- majorityThe received text stands: God made her a myriad, like the growth of the field; M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 (Anchor Bible 22, 1983), on 16:7
- minorityThe consonants should be read as a verb, "grow," following the Greek translation, so the number is not present; W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 (Hermeneia, 1979), on 16:7
Whether Deuteronomy 33:2 names myriads of holy ones accompanying God, or conceals a place name. Cross and Freedman argued that the lines naming Sinai, Seir and Paran require a fourth place, and emended the received Hebrew to Meribath-Kadesh, pointing to the Greek version's transliteration of the second word as the place Kadesh. Others defend the received text and read the holy ones of God's heavenly court, comparing Zechariah 14:5, Psalm 89:6-8 and Job 5:1. The evidence is not decisive and modern translations remain split.
- contestedThe received text stands, and the word names the innumerable holy ones who come with God; S. R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (ICC, 3rd ed., 1902), 391-393; D. L. Christensen, Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12 (Word Biblical Commentary 6B, 2002), on 33:2; F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Harvard, 1973), 91-111
- contestedThe text should be emended to the place name Meribath-Kadesh, so the verse is not an occurrence of this number; F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, The Blessing of Moses, Journal of Biblical Literature 67 (1948): 191-210, esp. 193-198; J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996), 320-321 and Excursus 32