The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi: The Hebrew Alphabet

Here's another moment that stood out to me from Kathie Lee Gifford's The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi:

Rabbi Jason Sobel explains how the Hebrew alphabet (which I am learning!) is alphanumeric, meaning each letter also signifies a number. There's great significance in numbers as well as letters, meaning you can even add up the value of the letters in a word or phrase and it will likely mean something. Cool! The letter hei, which makes the "h" sound, is the fifth letter of the alphabet, and is often connected with the divine breath of God that releases His creative power and potential (page 15). So when we see "5" in the Bible, like David picking up 5 stones when he only needed 1 to kill Goliath, it means something. 

Sobel says that in Genesis 2:4: "These are the genealogical records of the heavens and the earth when they were created, at the time with Adonai Elohim made land and sky", the word for created is bara, which means "created out of nothing". But it's written in a grammatically incorrect way, because it has the letter hei inserted in it. 

Why? Because of Who did the creating. 

This is also true for Abram and Sarai's story, who had their names changed by God, to: AbraHam and SaraH. There's only a 1 letter difference between their old and new names, and "the Lord added this letter to their names because it represented His creative power to accomplish the impossible!" (page 16).

WOW!

Here's another example of the alphanumeric quality of the Hebrew alphabet, from pages 54-55:

• The number 153 is the numerical value of the phrase, "I am the Lord your God" from Isaiah 43:3
• In Matthew 16, Peter says, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God" is a reference to Isaiah 43:3
• In John 21, when Jesus tells Peter and the other disciples to cast his nets on the other side of the boat, they catch 153 fish.
• 153 is also the value of the world HaPesach, which is the Passover Lamb described in Ex. 12:21. Jesus was the Passover Lamb.
• So, the number 153 would have reminded Peter of ALL of the above things. 
• Jesus called Peter 2x in the Bible, "The son of Jonah", which has the same value. Peter acted like Jonah by denying the Lord and running away.
• "According to Jerome, an early church father, there were 153 species of fish at the time in the sea of Galilee, which ties back to the disciples being fishers of men" (page 55).

WOW!

Is this new information to you? What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!