What Moshe Actually Wrote

Part 1 of 3

 

Before we can understand why something was covered we need to understand what was covered. And what was covered is more direct and more obvious than anything that replaced it. This document examines what Moshe (Moses) actually wrote when he wrote the Torah, and what two specific portions of that text have always been saying to anyone who could see them.

The short answer is this. What Moshe wrote was not letters in the sense we use that word. What Moshe wrote was pictures. Every letter of the Paleo-Hebrew (the pictographic script in use before the Babylonian exile, the script Moshe used in the wilderness approximately 1446 BCE) script was a drawn image. A recognizable picture of a recognizable thing. And the pictures spoke directly. No code. No numerical system. No authorized interpreter standing between the reader and the meaning. A house was a house. A nail was a nail. A hand was a hand. Obvious to anyone who could see a drawing.

What those pictures declared, in the very first word of the Torah and in the divine name itself, is the subject of this document.

The letters were not abstract strokes. They were pictures. Drawn images declaring their meaning directly to anyone who could see them. No interpretive system required. No numerical code. No authorized decoder. The picture of a house means house. The picture of a nail means nail. Obvious.

 

The First Word

Bereshit

Bereshit, pronounced Beh-reh-SHEET, accent on the final syllable. Not In the beginning as the English tradition renders it. The Hebrew carries no definite article. There is no the. It is simply In beginning, the absolute origin, the condition of beginning itself, before beginning had a before. Not a moment located on a timeline. The realm of beginning. YHWH acting before time had a container to exist in. The English translation adds the for readability. The Hebrew does not have it. And the absence matters, because what is declared in this word was declared before anything that could give the word the a referent.

Six letters. In the Paleo-Hebrew script, six pictures. And those six pictures declare something that the entire covenant testimony spends the rest of its pages confirming.

 

Bet ב  —  A House

The first picture of the first word of the Torah is a house. Drawn as a house. Not as an abstract bracket. As a house. Before creation begins. Before light is called. Before anything is named. The first declaration of the covenant testimony is a dwelling place. YHWH declaring in the first picture of the first word, I intend to live somewhere. The building project is announced before the building material exists.

 

Resh ר  —  A Head

The second picture is a head, the rosh, the first, the highest, the one at the top. The head is in the house. Already. Before anything is made. Paul calls Yeshua the head of the body, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18). The same head. Declared in the second letter of the first word. In the house. Before the creation begins.

 

Aleph א  —  An Ox Head — Strength, The First

Strength. The first. The strong one. The Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Yeshua declared himself the Aleph and the Tav, the first and the last. The beginning of the structural alphabet of the covenant testimony. Declared in the third letter of the first word.

 

Shin ש  —  Teeth — To Consume, To Press, To Complete

The consuming. The pressing through to completion. The action that costs something and finishes something. Present in the first word before the creation begins. The completion is built into the declaration of the dwelling from the beginning.

 

Yod י  —  A Hand

The hand. The acting, creating, reaching, making presence of the divine nature. The same Yod that begins the divine name YHWH. The hand that made the house. Present in the fifth letter of the first word. Before anything is made.

 

Tav ת  —  A Cross Mark — A Sign, The Last

The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Paleo-Hebrew script the Tav was drawn as a cross, two intersecting lines, the mark placed on the doorposts in Egypt, the sign that distinguished those inside the covenant from the judgment passing through. The same mark Yeshua declared himself to be, I am the Aleph and the Tav, the first and the last. Present in the sixth and final letter of the first word.

 

Six pictures. One word. The entire arc of the covenant testimony declared before the first sentence is complete. A house, the dwelling declared before the creation. A head, the rosh of all things already in the house. The first, the Aleph, the beginning. The consuming, the completion that costs something. A hand, the one who makes and reaches. A cross mark, the end that is also the declared completion.

The building project. The head in the building. The hand that builds. The mark that completes. All six in the first word. Before God is named. Before light is called. Before anything is made that was made.

The first word of the Torah declares in six Paleo-Hebrew pictures the entire covenant testimony from the dwelling before the creation to the completion at the cross. Six pictures. No code. No numerical system. No authorized interpreter. The house. The head. The first. The consuming. The hand. The mark. Obvious.

 

The Divine Name

YHWH

The name YHWH appears six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times in the covenant text. Four letters. In the Paleo-Hebrew script, four pictures. And those four pictures are not a sound to be pronounced or avoided. They are an identity declaration. YHWH declaring who he is in the shape of the letters that spell his own name.

 

Yod י  —  A Hand

Behold the hand. Not a story about what a hand will do. Not a prediction about a hand that will act in the future. The identity of YHWH in the first picture of his own name. I am the hand. The acting, creating, reaching, holding-both-sides presence of the divine nature. A hand. Drawn as a hand. Obvious.

 

Heh ה  —  A Man with Arms Raised — Behold, Look

Behold. The command to look. The declaration that something worth seeing is present. YHWH saying in the second letter of his own name, look at this. The same Heh he gave to Avraham and to Sarah from his own name, the behold placed in their names so the world would look toward what YHWH was declaring about himself.

 

Vav ו  —  A Nail, A Tent Peg — The Connector

Behold the nail. The connector. The fastener. The one who holds both sides. The nail preserved at the center of the Torah, the enlarged Vav of Leviticus 11:42 in every Torah scroll ever written. The nail in the name of David, Dalet Vav Dalet, two doors and a nail between them. I am the nail. YHWH declaring his own identity in the third picture of his own name. A nail. Drawn as a nail. Obvious.

 

Heh ה  —  A Man with Arms Raised — Behold, Again

Behold again. The name closes as it opened, with the command to look. The hand and the nail framed by two beholds. The identity framed by the command to see it. Behold the hand. Behold the nail. Behold. The name YHWH is not primarily a sound. It is an instruction. Look. See. The identity is right here.

 

Yod. Heh. Vav. Heh. Behold the hand. Behold the nail. Four pictures. The identity of YHWH declared in the shape of the letters that spell his own name. Not hidden in a numerical code. Not requiring a trained interpreter to decode. Not dependent on knowing any language or any alphabet. A hand and a nail, pictures recognizable in any culture in any century to anyone who has ever seen a hand drive a nail.

Six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times this declaration appeared in the covenant text. The same four pictures. The same identity. The same behold the hand, behold the nail in every occurrence of the name across the entire testimony.

 

The first word declares the building project. The divine name declares the builder. Both in pictures. Both obvious. Both speaking directly, to anyone who could see a drawing.

 

 

Yeshua said in John 5:39, the scriptures marturousin peri emou. They bear witness concerning me. The legal covenant witness-bearing of three witnesses, the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms — all testifying about the same one.

The first word of the Torah bears witness about him in six pictures. The divine name bears witness about him in four pictures. Obvious to anyone who looks at the pictures. Obvious before any interpretive system was built. Obvious in the Paleo-Hebrew script Moshe drew in the wilderness. Obvious to the Samaritan woman at the well who had kept the Paleo-Hebrew Pentateuch when almost everyone else had lost it.

 

The pictures were always speaking of him.

They were always obvious.

Part Two examines what covered them.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams