The Lord once said,
Search the scriptures; for in them ye
think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me (John
5:39). The fact that not just the texts of the Holy Scriptures but even the
very letters, the Hebrew alphabet used for writing of the Old Testament,
testify of the Lord is something amazing that you wouldn’t expect.
Jesus Christ is
known to have spoken in Aramaic, which was the most widespread language in
Palestine in those times. That is why when the Son of God claims that He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning
and the ending (Revelation 1:8), we should pay utmost attention to this
expression from the perspective of Ancient Hebrew.
Alpha and Omega are
the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. The first and the last
letters of the Hebrew alphabet are, respectively, א
(aleph) and ת (tav). The letter Aleph means “an ox” and symbolizes
a sacrificial animal offered to God. The letter Tav means “a mark” and evokes
even greater interest.
We read in the Book
of Ezekiel, “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city,
through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men
that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst
thereof.” (Ezekiel 9:4). What did that mark look like? We don’t find any
explanation in most English translations and in the Septuagint but that’s what
we read in Vulgate and in the Hebrew text: [S]et
a Tav upon the foreheads of the men, since the letter Tav ת means
“a mark”. St. Jerome noticed it while translating the Old Testament from Hebrew
into Latin. He wrote about it in his commentary on the Book of Prophet Ezekiel.
This mark was regarded as the seal and the sign of God of Israel since time
immemorial. It was also associated with the Name of God. And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an
hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their
foreheads. (Revelation 14:1). And: they
shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. (Revelation
22:4). Therefore, the seal or mark Tav was not only the sign of the Lord of
Hosts but also represented the Name of God, the sacred Tetragrammaton, and thus
served as a sign of His presence and His glory.
Additionally, we
can’t help mentioning another surprising fact: the Ancient Hebrew alphabet used
before the Exile and preserved by Samaritans, used a different variant of the
letter Tav ת. It looked like a cross + (see Hebrew alphabet), the
sign of Christ, His glory and victory. That is why when a priest anoints the
believers’ foreheads during a Matins service, he does not only mark them with
the sign of the Cross but also draws the Lord’s mark, which represents the Name
of God to be written on the foreheads of Christians in the latter days.
It is worth noting
that the letter Aleph appears as Ic in its cursive form (see Stylistic variants), identical to the abbreviated Greek form of the name Jesus.
That is why we can
interpret the words of Lord Jesus I am Alpha and Omega, Aleph and Tav, as Ic
+, i.e., “the sacrifice on the Cross”,
or “the Lamb (Ic) of God (+).
That is the
surprising information that we can learn from the Ancient Hebrew alphabet, in
which even single letters foreshadow the coming of the Savior of the world. The
Lord’s saying, filled with profound meaning, can be viewed both as a divine
prophecy about His redemptive ministry as the Lamb of God who took upon himself
the sins of the whole world, and the Messiah’s divinity, the mark of the One
God and the symbol of His Holy Name that makes the earth tremble.
By John Nichiporuk,
a Bachelor of Theology,
specialized in Biblical Studies.
specialized in Biblical Studies.
The Catalog Of Good Deeds, 2018
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