I have learned that the longest Parasha is Nasso, with 176 verses; that the longest Psalm is 119, also with 176 verses. And the biggest Tractate in the Talmud is Baba Batra, with 176 pages. Why? What's special with this number (176)? Thanks.
AskTheRabbi.org answered:
It is also fascinating that Parshat Nasso is nearly always read on the Shabbat before or after Shavuot. The number 176 is eight times twenty two. There are twenty two letters in the Aleph Bet (the Hebrew alphabet). The number eight always represents a concept that is super-natural (the number seven is nature). The number 176 is coming to teach that there is nothing "natural" about the Aleph Bet - the letters that God uses to bring His words down into the physical world. That is why Parshat Nasso is read right around Shavuot when we were given the Holy Torah by God and that is why the longest chapter of Psalms has 176 verses arranged according to the Aleph Bet. The only thing that I am not sure about is why Baba Batra is 176 pages long but I am not sure that that is really part of the equation as the first page of the Talmud is Daf (page) 2 which means that it is really "only" 175 pages long and not 176.
