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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