For a month now, we have been swimming in the sea of mysteries hidden in the language of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. In the post “In The Beginning“, we learnt how the first word of the Bible in Hebrew explains the entirety of the scriptures. Under the auspices of my good friend and “Rabbi” (soon to be Doctor of Pharmacy), Daniel Ohemeng Prempeh Jims, I have begun a series on the Holy Language. For the next couple of weeks, we will be learning about the DNA of creation.
Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit) is one of the Semitic languages spoken in the Middle East. Hebrew is said to be the language of Adam, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The word Hebrew is from a root word which means “to cross over”. It was written and spoken by the Israelites until they were conquered and exiled by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Aramaic, a sister language, replaced Hebrew as the language for daily transactions. However, Hebrew remained the language of prayer and education, even at the time of Jesus. As the second temple was destroyed in 70 AD and the Jews were scattered all over the world, the language began waning albeit it was still the language of prayer and study among the Jews. In the late 19th century, a man named Eliezer Ben Yehuda formulated plans to restore Hebrew to its former glory as the written and spoken language of the Jewish people. His dream was realized after his death when in 1922, a 17-volume set of the Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew was completed. Hebrew, originally, has no swear words.
The Holy Language (L’shon HaKodesh), as it is called, is said to be the DNA of Creation. This implies that the building blocks of this world are the letters of the Hebrew language. Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew reads “בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ” which is transliterated as “B’reshiyt bara Elohiym et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz.” Directly translating from Hebrew would read “In the beginning, God created et”. “Et” in Hebrew is a preposition and it points to a direct object. It is never translated in English and it is composed of two letters “א“ (aleph) and “ת” (tav). Aleph and Tav are the first and last letters of Hebrew respectively. Paul said that when the Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus, the Lord spoke to him in Hebrew. “And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” Acts 26:14-15. Since Jesus spoke Hebrew on earth and spoke the same language to Paul from Heaven, he would have spoken Hebrew to John on the island of Patmos. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” Revelation 1:8. The New Testament was written in Greek: alpha and omega are the first and last letters of Greek respectively. Since Jesus spoke Hebrew to His apostles, He would have actually said to John that He is the ‘Aleph’ and the ‘Tav’, the beginning and the end. Rabbinical sources also indicate that ‘et’ in Genesis 1:1 represents all the letters from aleph to tav.
Thus Genesis 1:1 can read “in the beginning, God created the Word!!! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” John 1:1-4 NKJV. In the study of scriptures Hebraically, there are four levels of gaining understanding: P’shat, Remez, Drush and Sod. P’shat is the literal level, Remez is the hint level, Drush is the commentary level, and Sod is the level of secrets. When John scribed the words, “in the beginning” in John 1:1, he made a hint to Genesis 1:1 to tell his readers that the beginning of creation was Jesus, the Messiah!! Thus, knowledge and understanding of Hebrew will aid a believer to unravel a lot of mysteries about the Godhead. הללויה Halleluyah!!!
The language has twenty-two letters known as alephbets. The shape of the letters have evolved with time; the ancient Hebrew alephbets were pictographs. Aleph was the head of an ox or a bull, gimmel was a camel, shin was the teeth and tav was a cross. The shape of the letter holds a key to unlocking the wisdom of that letter. Each letter has a numerical value, which is also known as Gemetria: aleph has a numerical value of 1; tav has a numerical value of 400. Another means of accessing the wisdom of the letters is to know the first time the letter appears in the Torah as the root of a word.
Let’s do a few word studies to whet our appetites for the gracious knowledge we’ll be acquiring in the coming weeks:
The father of a house is said to be the leader of that house. The Hebrew word for “father” is אב which is transliterated as “av”. It is formed by adding the first two letters of the alephbets, aleph and bet. Aleph, whose pictogram is an ox, means ‘a leader’ and ‘a champion’. The letter Bet, whose pictogram is a tent, denotes ‘a house’. Adding the letters literally gives us “Leader of the House”. The body, which is a temple (house), has a leader who is Christ.
Daniel recently shared with me something he learnt from the second letter of the Bible, ברא bara which means “create”. Bara is composed of three letters, bet, reish and aleph. Adding the letters bet and reish gives us the word ‘bar’ which is another word for ‘son’ in Hebrew. Aleph is the letter which points to the divinity of God and in essence, aleph is the letter for God Himself (more on that in the next post). Thus, the word בראת bara, can be read בר א bar aleph, which can mean “Son of God”.
As shared in the post “Love Is One“, the words for ‘love’ and ‘one’ are אהבה ahavah and אחד echad respectively. We learnt from that post that both words have a numerical value of 13. Adding the numerical values of both words yields 26 which is also the numerical value of the sacred name of God יהוה. The oneness of God and His love for His own are the two building blocks of our faith in Him.
The Hebrew word for nature is “Ha’Teva” –הטבע. It has a numerical value of 86. Elohiym אלהים, which is Hebrew for ‘God’ also has a numerical value of 86. This goes on to teach us that the natural world is full of God and His wisdom. The study of nature, ipso facto, is supposed to bring one to discover the LORD.
Cherished readers, this post is only the introduction to the series. In the coming weeks, we’ll be discussing the individual letters of L’shon Ha’Kodesh. I hope your appetites have been whetted enough through this post for the knowledge you’ll be receiving in the coming weeks.
Kindly leave your comments, suggestions and questions in the Comments section below.
Live long and prosper!!!
שלום
Shalom!!!
Mayim Chayim מים חיים 
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