Worthy Christian Devotional – Daily Devotion » Ancient Hebrew

The Hebrew word "Shabbat", what we call "the Sabbath" in English, means: "to rest". The ancient Hebrew word picture unfolds its meaning profoundly and even "prophetically". Shabbat is spelled "sheen"-"beit"-"tav".

The modern Hebrew word for repent is ‘shoov, spelled "sheen"-"beit" ("vet", the secondary form of "beit") In ancient Hebrew script the letter "sheen" is represented by teeth and means "to destroy". The "beit" in Hebrew represents a tent or a house. So a literal reading of "sheen"-"beit" would be "to destroy the house"!

The Hebrew word "shalom" has meaning that is deep and rich. Peace, completeness, prosperity, safety, contentment, health, blessing, and rest are all apportioned to the meaning of this remarkable word.. The ancient Hebrew spelling of "shalom" is interesting because it speaks only indirectly about these multiple meanings, but reveals something very profound about apprehending "shalom".

As we continue our studies in Ancient Hebrew word pictures, let's look at the symbols representing the word "Father". The letters which compose this word are "aleph" and "beit". The "aleph" was originally illustrated as an ox head, which denotes strength, power and a leader. "Beit" is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and its ancient symbol represents a tent and illustrates a home, dwelling, and family. So the ancient word for "Father", "Av" literally describes the leader of the house, or the leader of the family.

As we discussed last week, the word for "sign" in ancient Hebrew is "oht". It was used in Genesis to designate God’s covenant sign with Noah, (the rainbow). And we see now the same word again, in Exodus, identified with the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tenth plague, when the angel of death passed through all Egypt to strike the firstborn. Anyone under the "sign" of the blood was spared.

As we continue our study of the ancient Hebrew letters we continue to find hidden treasures of meaning. The ancient word for "sign" or "seal" is the word "oht", which is spelled, "Aleph"-"Vav"-"Tav". This word in the verse above has been translated, "sign", referring to a rainbow, which signified the Lord's promise never again to judge the earth by a flood.

We continue looking at the ancient Hebrew alphabet: the modern word for "religion" is the word – "dat" – spelled in Hebrew, "dalet"- "tav". The ancient Hebrew letter "dalet" pictures a door. And as we have previously shown, the "tav" is a covenant sign which is pictured as a simple cross. So the word "religion" in ancient Hebrew, could also be expressed as "the door of the covenant sign (a cross)”.

Yesterday, we began identifying the ancient Hebrew alphabet and exploring the potential symbolic meanings of its letters. The last letter, "Tav", as we saw, strongly resembles a cross. Today, we’re going to look at how "Tav" is spelled in ancient Hebrew. The phonetic spelling of "Tav" is Tav (T)-Vav (V). Now the ancient letter, "Vav" strongly resembled a commonly used tent peg, and then, later, a common nail. So the spelling of "Tav" contains a cross and a nail.

Our sojourn in America has been a series of divine appointments. When we were in Nashville, we were introduced to the ancient Hebrew alphabet; letters which were originally written much like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics in the time of Moses. In this written language it was often possible to derive the meaning of a word, because each letter was a symbol, which had its own particular meaning and significance.