Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. (Psalm 23:5)

Even people who may not be too familiar with the biblical text will recognize the phrase “my cup runneth over” as coming from the Bible (and some might even guess it is from a psalm or Psalm 23). But, what does that really mean… my cup runneth over/overflows? Yalkut Shemoni (A haggadic compilation on the books of the Old Testament) has, in my view, an unexpected interpretation:

Said R. Abbaye, “from here we learn that the cup of David in the times to come [Messianic Age] will hold 221 logs [133 liters].”

Now that’s a big cup.

Although here we get no explanation of why David will have such a big eschatological cup in the Messianic Age, we know where the number 221 comes from. Gematria is the calculation of numerical equivalence of letters, words or phrases. For example David in Hebrew is דוד (sometimes also spelled דויד), since each letter has a numerical value we get ד = 4) + (ו = 6) + (ד = 4) = 14). New Testament commentators point out that Matthews’ genealogy revolves around the number 14 which, as we just saw, is David’s number.

The Hebrew word translated as “runneth over” (more literally translated as “satiation” as in JPS’s translation “my cup is full”) is רויה, (ר=200; ו=6; י=10; ה=5) = 221. Therefore, according to this interpretation, the phrase כוסי רויה stands for “my cup is 221″ which is then attributed to David in the future.

This type of interpretation does not seem very promising if we are interested in understanding what it is meant by “my cup is full” without the dubious aid of gematria. But it does put the focus on the very interesting word רויה (satiation).
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