Arba'im is the indeclinable Hebrew numeral for forty, occurring 135 times and ranking among the most symbolically laden numbers in the Bible. Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness (Num 14:33-34; Deut 8:2), Moses spent forty days on Sinai (Exod 24:18; 34:28), Elijah traveled forty days to Horeb (1 Kgs 19:8), and Nineveh received forty days' notice of judgment (Jonah 3:4). The number frequently accompanies the nouns shanah ('year') and yom ('day'), creating formulaic phrases that became shorthand for divinely appointed intervals. German occasionally renders the numeral inconsistently ('vierzig' but also 'funfundvierzig'), reflecting compound-number translation challenges.