Today is Brought to You by the Hebrew Letter LAMED

Lamed + Titus

The 12th Hebrew letter pictures a shepherd’s staff or an ox goad. As a verb “lamad” means teach, learn, point, prick or goad. In my book, Crossing the Scriptures, I explain how each of the 22 Hebrew letters matches up to three books in the Bible, all 22 books equidistant. You’d expect to see the word teach show up a lot in this little New Testament book of Titus since it's the third book that matches up to lamed and, in fact, it does by a rate of about 10 times more (per 1000 words) than any other book.

What does Paul’s letter to Titus tell us? See chapter 2 for a list of what should be taught. Here’s my summary:

1.       Teach older men temperance, to be respectable, to be self-controlled and to be sound in faith, love and endurance.
2.        Teach older women to be reverent, not to be slanderers, not to be addicted to alcohol and to be teachers of what is good.
3.        Older women are to train younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home and to be subject to their husbands.
4.       Young men are to be encouraged to be self-controlled and to do what is good, to show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned.
But wait, there’s more. Slaves are to be taught, too. Here it would be helpful to substitute employees for slaves (some would argue they are the same thing nowadays).
5.       Slaves/employees are to be subject to their masters/bosses in everything, to please them, not to talk back, not to steal from them and to show trustworthiness.

Think about these things from a boss’s perspective. How pleased would he be to have such an employee?

The end of chapter 2 tells us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives.

Read Chapter 3 for more – we are to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good. We are to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate and to show true humility toward all men. Some synonyms for humility are humbleness, modesty and meekness.

Can you see how well our Hebrew letter, lamed, relates? Throughout this epistle I envision Paul holding a staff and teaching, exhorting, explaining, and pointing with it. There is plenty to learn in this short book; take some time now and study it.

Today is Brought to You by the Hebrew Letter YOD

The 10th Hebrew letter, yod, is based on the word yad which means hand. The symbol of the hand represents power, might, ability and authority. Interestingly enough this letter is the smallest of all the Hebrew letters. It looks like an apostrophe. All the other letters have this little yod as part of their construction. Yod is the first letter in the names given to represent the Jewish people as well as the name of the sacred Jewish city.  It is also the first letter of Jesus’ name.

And the first letter of God’s Holy Name. This name is often called the Tetragrammaton and you may see it written in our alphabet as YHVH (pronounced Yahweh or Jehovah). It is considered by Orthodox Jews too sacred and holy to be pronounced and so when they are reading scripture they will substitute another name for God such as HaShem or Adonai. I’d like to point out something that made me gasp as I was learning these Hebrew letters, their individual symbolic meanings, and analyzing God’s name. The symbolic meanings behind these individual letters in YHVH are HAND, BEHOLD, NAIL, BEHOLD. Right there in God’s Holy Name have been clues to Jesus’ crucifixion!

(parts taken from Crossing the Scriptures (Kindle))

Today is Brought to You by . . .

Today is brought to you by the second Hebrew letter, bet, and the second book in the Bible, Exodus.

The name of the second letter is based on the word for house and is found in over 2000 verses. Its shape in the ancient script represented a tent, the typical house of the Hebrews as they wandered in the wilderness. It looks a lot like our letter b if you tip it up.

The Hebrew word for father is “av”, made up of the first letter, aleph (leader), and the bet (house): symbolically and literally the father is the leader of the house. 

The Midrash (Rabbinic literature commentating and clarifying biblical texts) asks the question: Why does the Bible begin with the letter bet? The answer is that since bet is closed in all directions except forward (reading right to left), it implies that there was nothing before. We can know only what comes from that point on.

The second book of the Bible gets its name from the exodus that occurred. In Hebrew this book is not called Exodus, but rather “Sh’mot”, which means names.  Look at your Bible and see how the book starts with the names of the sons of Israel. This book was written by Moses and records the redemption out of Egyptian bondage. Other major themes are the giving of the Law and the provisions of sacrifice and priesthood. You could divide the book into three sections: 1^st, Israel in Egypt and under bondage for 400 years; 2^nd, moving from the Red Sea to Sinai and God making the covenant with Israel through the Ten Commandments; 3^rd, Israel at Sinai and the construction and consecration of the Tabernacle, the house of the Lord. Three “bet” words are evident in each section – son (ben), covenant (brit) and house (bet).

(Learn more cool stuff in Crossing the Scriptures.)

Today is Brought to You by the Letter Pey

The letter pey is one of the five Hebrew letters which have a different form if they come at the end of a word. (See the smaller letter ? It's actually the supposed to be the same size. The curled tail just straightens out.) Pey means mouth.

In the Bible there are several chapters in Psalms, Proverbs and Lamentations that were written as acrostics, that is, each verse (or series of verses) begins with the next consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There are 22 letters so it’s easy to see the pattern when a chapter has 22 (or 66) verses. Of course the Bible wasn’t written with the verse numbers, but you can see the poetry of verses in the original.

Now here’s the really cool thing: in the original Hebrew these acrostic verses start with the word pey (mouth). See?

Psalm 119: 131 - I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.
Psalm 135: 16, 17 - They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see.
Psalm 66: 17 - I cried out to him with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue.
Proverbs 31:26 - She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness.
Lamentations 3:46 - All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

The Bible is full of so many amazing intricacies. How can anyone dispute its divine inspiration?

(Above taken in part from CROSSING THE SCRIPTURES, copyright 2011.)
(Other posts on Hebrew letters: TET , ZAYIN, KAPH )

Today is Brought to You by the Letter ZAYIN

Zayin is the 7th Hebrew letter and means weapon or sword. In Modern Hebrew it means to be armed and that is the primary theme of the 7th book of the Bible: Judges.

Zayin sounds like an English “Z” and was drawn like a “Z” in ancient Hebrew. Key Bible words that start with this letter are zayin (weapon, sword), zakar (remember), zamam (think, consider), zuah (tremble), and zanah (to fornicate, to be a whore). Think about these words in relation to the Bible.

Two more zayin key words are zavav which means buzz and zevuv (zebub) which means a fly. I’ll bet you already knew this from the Hebrew for “Lord of the flies”. Remember they’d get off track and worship Baal? Baal means “lord” so Baalzebub means lord of flies.

Exactly 22 books later we come to the next Zayin book: Joel. Joel prophesies that the Lord will do the judging in the valley of Jehoshaphat. (I always liked that name because my father used to say “jumpin’ Jehoshaphat” as an exclamation.) In studying Hebrew I learned that this word is made up of two words: shaphat which means judge and yeho (jeho) which is the beginning of God’s name, Jehovah. So you get Jeho . . . shaphat – God judges. This links divinely back to the first zayin book, Judges, because in Judges (and only in Judges) is God given the title “the Lord the Judge” (Judges 11:27). The name Jehoshaphat appears dozens of times in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, but “the valley of Jehoshaphat” appears ONLY in Joel, the second zayin book.

(taken in part from CROSSING THE SCRIPTURES, copyright 2011)

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Today is Brought to You by the Letter TET

The Hebrew letter TET looks like this and sounds like our letter T. Literally it means twist or serpent. A good representative word that starts with TET is “tov” which means good, as in “mazel tov”. You hear this phrase at Jewish weddings, literally it means “good destiny” but is often translated as “good luck” even though Jews don’t believe in luck.

The alphabetic (or acrostic) verses in the Bible give us lots of clues to important key words that start with each Hebrew letter. Alphabetic verses each start with the next succeeding Hebrew letter in the original scriptures. We lose this poetic form in translation.

Some alphabetic verses that start with the 9th Hebrew letter, TET, are (King James Version):
Psalm 25:8 Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.
Psalm 112.5a A good man sheweth favour, and lendeth
Lamentations 3:27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
Psalm 119:71 It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.
Lamentations 3.26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
Psalm 119.68 Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes.
Psalm 119:66 Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments.
Psalm 145.9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.
Lamentations 3.25 The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.

Amazingly, the word “tov” appears more in 1st Samuel than any other Old Testament history book (Joshua through Esther). Why is that amazing? Because there are 66 books in the Bible and if you match them up consecutively with the 22 Hebrew letters, the ones that match TET are 1st Samuel, Obadiah and 2nd Thessalonians. More amazing connections are made to the letter TET in all three books.

You can learn more in my book CROSSING THE SCRIPTURES or in Richard Amiel McGough’s book, THE BIBLE WHEEL.