Your days are numbered

If ever a phrase sounded biblical in origin it is this one and, surely, if not the Bible then Shakespeare. In fact, it is neither. The first person known to have written down the expression ‘our days are numbered’ was the English country gentleman Reginald Scot, in his expose of witchcraft The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584:

Mans body also is subject unto death, and hath his daies numbred.

The phrase, although it doesn’t appear in The Bible, has Christian antecedants. Many early texts refer to the notion the God has predetermined and numbered various elements of people’s lives. One’s steps, breaths and ‘all things’ are all described as numbered by God in many medieval sources.