The term "a thousand" is used in most languages in a figurative sense to represent a large number or a large indefinite period. Certain common numbers are frequently used in Scripture as valuable symbols to represent particular divine truths or ideas; a thousand and ten thousand are two such numbers. They are employed as familiar figures to impress deep spiritual principles in a distinctly comprehendible and identifiable way. It is not necessarily the exact numerical size of the figure outlined that is important but the spiritual idea that it represents. In fact, English dictionaries recognise the indefinite nature of a thousand defining it variously as a very large number or a great number or amount. This use is very common in our daily language.
The phrase “a thousand” comes up a lot in every day conversation. For example: “a picture is worth a thousand words” is a familiar saying. This simply tells us that much can be gleaned from a still print. An image can be more revealling and more influential than a substantial amount of text.
Another well-known phrase that some use is: “A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.” This suggests that the greatest of endeavours starts with the first move – a great undertaking must start somewhere.
We may in passing say: “I have a thousand things to do today.” However, the expression is no way intended to delineate an exact number, but rather a notion. It is simply a figure of speech.
Tourists are welcomed to Dublin, Ireland by “Welcome to City of a Thousand Welcomes.” This is simply a figurative expression epitomising the friendliness and hospitality of the place.
People also use ‘a thousand’ as a round figure or as a phrase to describe a general amount. If they had $1053 (literally pronounced one thousand and fifty three dollars) it wouldn't be uncommon or unusual to say I had a thousand dollars. They would simply round it off to a familiar even number. This is where 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000 are often used. These are not wooden numbers.
This figure is also used to describe a long indeterminate period of power and government. Hitler boasted that the Third Reich would last a thousand years. The Nazi Party used the terms Drittes Reich and Tausendjähriges Reich (Thousand-Year Reich) to describe the rule, power and vision of the Fascist kingdom. It wasn’t that Hitler limited his wicked dream to that period, but that it symbolically represented a long period of unparalleled supremacy.
Churchill also infamously said of the victory of the war, “if we fail, the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, ‘This was their finest hour’” (Churchill in his speech on June 18, 1940).
People often mistakenly concentrate upon the actual figure revealed rather than what that figure represents. One hundred and forty and four thousand on the other hand, whilst rarely used (being found only in the deeply symbolic book of Revelation), is similarly used, only in an increased manner to impress a number that is completely unfathomable by human capability. The figure of one hundred and forty and four thousand but be viewed in relation to the biblical use of a thousand representing vastness and 12 representing authority.