Rabbi Hoshaya ben Levi discovered a numerical poem in an old Aggadah book. Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 285, preserves it in four lines.
The Torah contains one hundred seventy-five parashiyot — weekly or sectional readings in the cycle he worked with. Abraham lived one hundred seventy-five years (Genesis 25:7).
The Book of Psalms — the Tehillim — contains one hundred forty-seven chapters, according to one ancient count that differs from the one hundred fifty we now use. Jacob lived one hundred forty-seven years (Genesis 47:28).
And the word Hallelujah appears one hundred twenty-three times across the Psalms. Aaron, the first High Priest, lived one hundred twenty-three years (Numbers 33:39).
Three pillars of Israel's sacred library, each indexed to a patriarch's lifespan. The Torah's sections to the father who first heard God's voice. The Psalms' chapters to the grandson who wrestled with the angel and fathered the twelve tribes. The Hallelujahs to the High Priest who sang God's praise in the Tabernacle.
Rabbi Hoshaya does not claim the numbers are coincidence, and he does not claim they are mystical code. He simply sets them side by side, the way a poet places two images together and trusts the reader to feel the rhyme. The Torah knows its own ancestors. The Psalms know who they are praising. Even the word Hallelujah remembers whose voice first wore it smooth.