Post by Salzmank on Jul 15, 2017 14:37:29 GMT
7 itself has long been a sacred number: seven days of Creation in the Bible (i.e., God rested on the seventh) in Judaism and Christianity, seven heavens in Islam and Judaism (and, because of the rhyming effect, in western, or at least Anglophone, popular culture as well), seven deadly sins, seven days in the week, seven seas, seven continents, seven elements in medieval astrology, seven classical "planets" (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), etc.
Wikipedia has the last point as the reason why so many different cultures prize the number seven. It's also odd and prime (Mersenne prime, to be exact), if those factors have anything to do with it.
Wikipedia also informs me that 7 was the pharaoh's number in Ancient Egypt, to such an extent that for a period commoners were not even allowed to use the number.
Repeating it three times (three being another sacred number--the Christian Trinity, for example) would seem to increase the sacred quality.
I should also add that, in Arabic, the word for seven is often used to indicate "many" or "infinite." In Islam, God is frequently titled "maker and sustainer of many words"), or something to that effect; there's an interesting parallel with the original translation of the Christian Nicene Creed: "...begotten of his father before all worlds..."