LAMED VOVNIKS (Lamed Vavniks) are featured by Philologos. Excerpt

Shimon ben Yohai certainly did not have the modesty attributed by later Jewish legend to a Lamed-Vavnik, but his boast caused the talmudic sage Abbaye, who lived slightly more than 100 years after him, to add to it (Abbaye’s remark is found in the same passage in Sukkah):

“There are never less than 36 just men in the world who greet the Shekhinah [God’s worldly presence] every day, for it is written [in the book of Isaiah 30:18], “Blessed are all who wait for Him” [ashrei kol h.okhei lo], and [the word] lo [“for Him,” spelled Lamed-Vav] is numerically equal to 36.”

Abbaye’s interpretation is in the nature of a numerical pun, since by reading the verse from Isaiah as if there were a comma between “wait” and “for Him,” he gives it the meaning of “Blessed are all who wait, [the] 36.” Although he does not explicitly say that these 36 men keep the world from destruction, his statement, read in the context of Shimon ben Yohai’s declaration, implies that they have the power to ward off the harshness of God’s judgment. This, then, would appear to be the source of the Jewish legend of the Lamed-Vavnik.

But what, in turn, is the source of Abbaye’s statement? It seems highly unlikely that he would have hit on such an interpretation of Isaiah 30:18 had he read it without preconceptions. Rather, he must have been looking to begin with for a biblical verse that could be construed in such a fashion. Why?

This question was addressed by Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, in a short essay published in German in 1962 and in English in 1971, under the title “The Tradition of the Thirty-Six Hidden Just Men.” In this essay, Scholem speculates that the number 36 “originates in ancient astrology, where the 360 degrees of the heavenly circle are divided into thirty-six units of ten, the so-called ‘deans.’” (In astrological literature, these units are more commonly known as “decans.”)

Background here.