The Mystery of the Aleph and Tav

The very first words of Scripture contain a mystery that has been waiting thousands of years for eyes willing to see it. Many pass over it without a second thought, because in translation it seems invisible. Yet this small, two-letter Hebrew word carries within it the signature of the Messiah Himself. That word is אֵת — ’et — spelled Aleph (א) and Tav (ת), the first and last letters of the Hebrew alephbet.

When Moses recorded the creation account in Genesis, he began: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ — Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz — “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Hidden in plain sight is אֵת, right after the name of God. Grammatically, in Hebrew, it is considered the “direct object marker.” It signals what the action of the verb applies to. But unlike most words in Scripture, it cannot be translated directly into English. It has no sound or meaning—only a function.

Yet, what is untranslatable to men is not meaningless to God. He Himself placed those letters in His Word, and they whisper of a mystery too deep to be accidental. For אֵת is Aleph and Tav, the beginning and the end, the span of the entire Hebrew alphabet—the very building blocks of God’s revelation. Every word of Scripture, every law and promise, every psalm and prophecy, is constructed from the letters between Aleph and Tav. The moment God speaks creation into being, His Word—embodied in letters—reveals His Son.

Yeshua confirms this mystery in Revelation 22:13, saying: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Though the New Testament was written in Greek, the Jewish hearers would have instantly understood the Hebrew parallel: He was declaring Himself the Aleph and the Tav. He was identifying Himself with the untranslatable signature that saturates the Tanakh. In other words, Yeshua is the אֵת of Genesis 1:1—the very One through whom the heavens and the earth came into being.

This is why John begins his Gospel with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Greek word used is λόγος (logos) — Word — but for a Hebrew mind steeped in the Torah, that Word was the Aleph and Tav, the fullness of divine speech, the complete alphabet of creation. Paul affirms the same truth in Colossians 1:16, where he writes: “For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through Him and for Him.”

So why did God choose to hide His Son’s signature in a tiny grammatical marker? Perhaps because His greatest treasures are always hidden in plain sight, waiting for those who hunger for truth. Proverbs tells us, כְּב֣וֹד אֱלֹהִ֣ים הַסְתֵּ֑ר דָּבָ֗ר וּכְב֥וֹד מְלָכִ֗ים חֲקֹ֥ר דָּבָֽר — Kevod Elohim hastēr davar, u’kevōd melakhim chakor davar — “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25:2).

The Aleph and Tav is one of those concealed matters—a treasure waiting for us to search it out.

Let’s pause and look more deeply at the letters themselves. Aleph (א) is the first of the Hebrew aleph-bet. In its ancient pictographic form, it resembled the head of an ox—symbolizing strength, leadership, and silent authority. Aleph has no sound of its own, only a breath. It represents the invisible, infinite God—silent, unseen, yet present as the source of all sound and meaning.

Tav (ת), the last letter, in Paleo-Hebrew was drawn as a cross or a mark. It represented covenant, completion, a sign or seal. The prophet Ezekiel writes in Ezekiel 9:4 about a mark—a tav—being placed on the foreheads of the righteous. Thus Tav became the symbol of God’s covenantal protection and the finality of His promises.

Put them together—Aleph and Tav—and you have a picture of the Eternal, Invisible God revealing Himself through the cross, bringing covenant and completion. This is why Yeshua could stand before His disciples and say, “These are the very Scriptures that testify about Me” (John 5:39). From the very first verse, the Scriptures bear His hidden signature.

And this mystery deepens when we look at prophecy. In Zechariah 12:10, God declares: וְהִבִּיטוּ אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָרוּ — vehibitu elai et asher daqaru — “They will look upon Me, et whom they have pierced.” Here אֵת appears again, this time directly connected with the piercing of God Himself. When John recounts the crucifixion, he writes: “They will look on the one they have pierced” (John 19:37), quoting Zechariah. The hidden Aleph and Tav of creation becomes the revealed Aleph and Tav of redemption.

Notice the pattern:

• In Genesis 1:1, אֵת is the hidden Word through whom all things are created.

• In Zechariah 12:10, אֵת is the One pierced for His people.

• In Revelation 22:13, Yeshua declares that He is the Aleph and Tav, the Alpha and Omega.

The particle that grammarians say “does not translate” is, in truth, one of the greatest declarations of Messiah in the entire Bible.

Even in Aramaic—the language Yeshua spoke daily—we see echoes. The Aramaic word את (’at) functions much like its Hebrew counterpart. In the Targums, Jewish translators occasionally added interpretive phrases around it, indicating that it was sometimes understood to carry theological weight. It was as if they sensed there was more to this word than grammar. They did not yet know it, but they were glimpsing the hidden Messiah.

Consider also the way the Aleph and Tav saturates Scripture. It appears thousands of times in the Tanakh. Each time, it stands silently, like a divine signature that says: “I am here. I am the One behind this.” From the creation of the heavens and the earth, to the covenant with Abraham, to the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the Aleph and Tav was always present, waiting to be revealed.

And when Messiah came in the flesh, He revealed Himself as that very Aleph and Tav. He was the Living Torah, the embodiment of every letter, every command, every promise. He told His disciples in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” The Aleph and Tav of Genesis was now walking among them.

The mystery grows even more beautiful when we realize that the Hebrew alphabet itself testifies of Messiah. Jewish tradition teaches that God created the universe through the letters of the aleph-bet. If Yeshua is the Aleph and Tav, then He is the fullness of that creative power—the One through whom the Father spoke the world into being. The rabbis said that the Torah existed before creation, written in black fire on white fire. John simply put it this way: “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind” (John 1:4).

And finally, think of this: Aleph and Tav encompass all the letters in between. That means everything—every promise, every covenant, every prophecy—is contained within Him. He is not only the first and the last, but everything in between. He is the thread that holds the entire fabric of Scripture together. Without Him, the Bible is a sealed book. With Him, it becomes the living Word of God.

So the next time you come across that little word אֵת, do not pass over it. Pause. Remember that it is more than grammar. It is the hidden fingerprint of Messiah, the Aleph and Tav, the One who was with God in the beginning, the One who was pierced for our sins, and the One who will bring history to its final completion.

He is the first and the last. He is the Aleph, the silent One who is unseen, and He is the Tav, the mark of the covenant written in the form of a cross. He is the eternal Word through whom all things were created, and the Word made flesh who dwelt among us. And when He returns, every eye will see Him, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that He is Lord, the Aleph and the Tav, to the glory of God the Father.

So do not pass over that tiny, untranslatable word אֵת. See it for what it is: the hidden testimony of Messiah woven into the very fabric of Scripture, the silent witness of the One who is, who was, and who is to come.

As we continue to meditate on the profound mystery of the Aleph and Tav, our attention turns naturally to one of the earliest and most powerful signs of God’s covenant love and redemption—the blood of the Passover lamb. This is the first tangible mark of God’s saving grace in history, a living symbol that sets apart His people from destruction and death.

In Exodus 12:7, God commands Israel to take the blood of a spotless lamb and apply it carefully to the two doorposts and the lintel of their homes:
וְלָקְחוּ מִן־הַדָּם וְנָתְנוּ עַל־שְׁתֵּי הַמְּזוּזֹת וְעַל־הַמְּזוּזָה עַל־הַבָּתִּים אֲשֶׁר יֹאכְלוּ אֹתוֹ —
V’laq’chu min-hadam v’nat’nu al shtei ha-mezuzot v’al ha-mezuzah al ha-batim asher yokhlu oto — “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.”

This was not a mere physical marking but a divine covenant sign—a boundary between judgment and mercy, between death and life. The blood on the doorposts was the visible token that the house belonged to the Lord and was under His protection. The angel of death, passing through Egypt to execute divine judgment, would see the blood and pass over that house, sparing the firstborn within from death.

This moment, etched deeply into the history of God’s covenant with Israel, is more than a historical event or ritual. It is a prophetic shadow of the eternal redemption that Messiah would accomplish centuries later. The Passover blood is the first foreshadowing of the Tav, the final letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which in its ancient Paleo-Hebrew form was drawn as a mark, a cross-shaped sign. 

The Tav is the divine seal, the mark of covenant and completion, and it resonates powerfully with the blood-mark on the doorposts. Just as the blood of the lamb set apart the Israelites for life in Egypt, so the Tav mark set apart the righteous in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 9:4), and so the servants of God are sealed in the last days with the Lamb’s name on their foreheads in Revelation (Revelation 7:3; 14:1). The Tav is a living sign of belonging to God, a covenant boundary of protection and identity.

Yeshua, the Aleph and Tav, fulfilled the ancient Passover in His own body. He is the true Lamb whose blood was shed for the salvation of the world. In John 1:29, John the Baptist declares, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The blood of Yeshua is the fulfillment of the blood on the doorposts—a covenant that delivers from judgment and grants eternal life.

Consider the power of this connection: the Aleph, the silent breath of God, represents the invisible, ineffable Creator; the Tav, the mark, the cross, symbolizes the covenant sealed by blood. From the first breath of creation to the final seal of redemption, the entire story of God’s saving work is encoded in the Aleph and Tav, just as the blood-mark at Passover was the sign of His faithfulness and protection.

In the wilderness journey that followed the Exodus, God reminded His people again and again that they were set apart by this covenant blood. The Passover feast itself became a lasting ordinance, a memorial of deliverance and a foreshadowing of the final redemption to come. The Apostle Paul reflects on this in 1 Corinthians 5:7, calling Yeshua “our Passover lamb, sacrificed for us.” The covenant blood that once marked doorways now marks hearts.

The profound spiritual truth of the Aleph and Tav invites us into this covenant reality. It is not only a linguistic marker but a living symbol of God’s eternal plan—from creation through covenant, sacrifice, and final redemption. The mark on the doorposts and the mark on the foreheads of the saints in Ezekiel and Revelation speak to the same divine faithfulness. They proclaim that God protects, redeems, and completes His people through the Lamb who is both the Beginning and the End.

This teaching leads us to a deep reflection on our own identity and security in Messiah. Are we marked by the blood of the Lamb? Do we bear the seal of the Aleph and Tav in our hearts, knowing that the One who began creation is the One who will bring it to glorious completion?

The mystery of the Aleph and Tav calls us to trust in the eternal God who breathes life into the world and writes His name on the foreheads of His people. As we stand beneath this ancient sign, may our faith be strengthened by the unbroken thread of God’s covenant love—woven from the blood on the doorposts of Egypt, through the cross of Messiah, to the eternal sealing of the redeemed.

And may we walk confidently in the assurance that the Aleph and Tav, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, is faithful to complete the good work He has begun in us.

 

 

IMAGE done by chatgpt at my direction