Study on the Number Twenty-Three

Summary

God uses the number 23 in connection with judgment.

Examples

God brings judgment to the sanctuary and the host for 2,300 days:

Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. (Daniel 8:13-14)

God brings judgment through a plague which kills 23,000 people in one day:

Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. (1 Corinthians 10:8)

God speaks of 23,000 people who were not given inheritance and would die in the wilderness.

And those that were numbered of them were twenty and three thousand, all males from a month old and upward: for they were not numbered among the children of Israel, because there was no inheritance given them among the children of Israel (Numbers 26:62)

These 23,000 signify unsaved individuals who are under the wrath of God and will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The last good king of Judah (Josiah) was killed in battle in 609 BC. The four kings who followed him were very wicked and reigned until 587 BC, which is when Judah was completely destroyed by the Babylonians. These 23 years between the death of Josiah and the destruction of Judah points to the judgment of God. It can be shown that this timeframe foreshadows the 2,300 days of Daniel 8:14.