Faith
What Is the Meaning of the Number Forty in the Torah?
Question
Hashem told Noah that there would be a flood for 40 days and nights. Moses ascended Mount Sinai for 40 days and nights in order to receive the Torah. Is there a connection or significance between the two events?
Answer
Hello
There are several examples that are all connected. However, the general rule for understanding the essence of a concept in the Torah and in the Gemara is to examine where it appears for the first time, and it seems to me that the first appearance of the number is in the Flood:
1. The Flood: forty days
2. Forty minus one lashes (in essence, forty; in practice one receives thirty-nine, and the total pain of all of them together is counted as forty), and therefore the expression forty minus one is used.
3. The giving of the Torah.
4. Forty years, during which the Children of Israel were punished in the wilderness.
5. Forty days before the formation of the fetus, the matters that relate to its birth are proclaimed about it.
6. A person does not fully understand his teacher until forty years. And more and more. Forty alludes to completeness in time and in nature. I do not remember at the moment the full explanation; it is worth looking in the commentary of the Maharal on the Chumash in Parashat the Flood, where the commentary is Gur Aryeh
