Aleph – Taw

Originally posted on April 05, 2006 – by Andre Piet

Over the past few days, I have read several intriguing articles about the secrets of the Hebrew alphabet. I would like to briefly highlight one particularly fascinating point in this weblog. In Revelation 22:13, the Lord Jesus refers to Himself as “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Rendered back into Hebrew, this would read: “I am the Aleph and the Taw, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

The peculiarity here is that this letter combination (Aleph/Taw – AT) occurs very frequently in the Hebrew Bible (7043 times), yet as a word (Strong 853), it is generally not translated. Grammarians agree that AT points to the following direct object. With “the First and the Last” in mind, that makes perfect sense, I believe! ‘AT’ points to the Object that was to come.

One more thing: in ancient Hebrew, letters are pictograms, with the Aleph drawn as the head of a sacrificial animal and the Taw as a cross… These meanings of the letters are still quite recognizable even in our own alphabet. For our A is nothing other than the head of an ox, turned downward (with the legs of the A representing the horns), and our T is also… a cross.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created Aleph-Taw the heavens and the earth…

The AT, “the First and the Last” of Revelation 22 (the final chapter of the Bible…), already appears in Genesis 1 verse 1. The Aleph-Taw is the One through Whom God made the heavens and the earth. After all, “all came into being through Him…”

Isaiah 6:1

In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I (Isaiah) saw Aleph-Taw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne…

Who did Isaiah see here? Listen to John (12:41):

These things Isaiah said because he perceived His (=Christ) glory, and speaks concerning Him.

Third example: Zechariah 12:10 (KJV):

… and they will look on Me, Aleph-Taw, Whom they pierce…

Israel will one day come face to face with Him who is the Image of the invisible God. The One they once pierced, the Aleph-Taw.

Each of these is a brilliant hidden reference in the Hebrew Bible to Him who would die as the Sacrificial Animal on the cross. The First and the Last.

Delen: