Lucky sevens

I took a class on Shakespeare in the mid 90's. It was, clearly, a heady time, with kids experimenting with Shakespeare and getting their fix on the streets. I needed to be a hip and cool teacher who could bring them Shakespeare in the classroom, exploiting their interests and taking advantage of their natural curiosity. 

Anyway, one thing that the prof said was that in the good olde days, five was an important unit. Bill's plays relied on a classical notion of the five act structure. Words like fist indicated a complete unit (one hand has five fingers -- look it up!). Even the slang for a five dollar bill is "fin" and that must mean something!

But I also have recently realized that Judaism, though it recognizes the value of all numbers (HA!) and does have some use for 5, its real stress is on seven. It is, as one could say, 2 more louder.

In Hebrew, seven is sheva (shin, vet, ayin). Whether there is any etymological connection between the words "seven" and "sheva" is beyond the scope of this piece, mostly because the books in which I would look it up are in the other room and I'm feeling lazy. Seven is significant as a unit of completion -- seven days in a week, the seventh year is a sabbatical year, we count 7 weeks between Passover and Shavu'ot. A baby boy's circumcision takes place after he has lived a complete week (and an animal can be sacrificed after 7 days).

I also noticed that the consonants involved are the same 3 used for "oath" (sh'vu'ah) and satiety (sova). In fact, Klein has, as part of the etymology of sh'vu'ah (oath) 'to be bound by seven things or seven oaths.' So the connection between seven and swear is right there. To my ears, this then means that being bound by 7 things means a sense of the maximum amount -- the right amount for an absolute oath. Then the leap from "7 which is the full amount" to "satisfied and satiated, full" seems straightforward. What is the ultimate statement of a full meal? A seven course dinner. And if you look at wikipedia, you will see that 2 other fancy meals are the 14 course and the 21 course. Sevens for the gustatory win.

It seems to me clear that there has to be a connection between all three of the words which work with the same 3 letter root (shin-vet-ayin) and maybe aspects of each wort can give us insight into the parameters of the others.

Seven, in Judaism, is a central unit and a concept of "complete". That makes five look like just an odd number.