בראשית ברא אלהים (את) השמים ואת הארץ
Genesis 1:1… In the beginning God (YOU) created the heavens and the earth.
This is how most translators want to render this passage of Scripture. But when we go to some of today’s concordance, and we look at this passage of Scripture, as a word for word translation it reads a little differently. See below:
In the beginning… בראשית
Created… ברא
God… אלהים
You… את
The Heavens… השמים
And… ואת
The Earth… הארץ
As we look further into Strong’s concordance #H853 to understand the meaning of the Alaph Tav (את), it says that “this word is untranslatable, and it has a hidden meaning to it”. Most translators want to put something in the sentence for it to make sense to us the reader. What is this word and what does it mean? Why should we care to know about it?
Well, this is indeed a sacred secret to find within this first sentence of Genesis. We will now look at the rich meaning of this supposedly untranslatable word rendered as the Hebrew letters Alaph Tav (את).
What did the apostles of Christ say about this passage of Scripture? We will then compare what Moses wrote about the beginning of creation to what the apostle John and the apostle Paul both wrote about it.
The Beginning of Creation
Genesis 1:1-5… In the beginning God created (YOU את) heavens and the earth.The earth was unformed and void, darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. So there was evening, and there was morning, one day.
So, Moses writes that in the beginning the heavens, the earth was created. God’s spirit was present moving about the earth and as God spoke creation began to obey the word that God spoke to it. Notice that light was the next thing that was created according to Moses. Now let us compare that to what the apostle John wrote:
John 1:1-5… In the beginning was (YOU את) the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing made had being. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not suppressed it.
The apostle John identifies the Word of God as the logos (YOU) as being the first of God’s creative works and that nothing else came in the existence without him. That the word of God (YOU the logos) became the light for mankind. Now let us turn our attention to the apostle Paul as he describes the beginning of creation.
Colossians 1:15-17… He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All other things have been created through him and for him. Also, he is before all other things and by means of him all other things were made to exist…
So, the apostle Paul identifies Christ Jesus as the firstborn of creation. Because all things were created through him, and for him, without Christ nothing could exist. That would make Christ the beginning of God’s creative works followed by the heavens the earth then the light.
Now what does God’s Word say about the beginning of creation?
Proverbs 8:22-31…The Lord made (begot)me at the beginning of His creation, before His works of long ago. 23 I was formed before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began. 24 I was born when there were no watery depths, and no springs filled with water. 25 I was delivered before the mountains and hills were established, 26 before He made the land, the fields, or the first soil on earth. 27 I was there when He established the heavens, when He laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean, 28 when He placed the skies above, when the fountains of the ocean gushed out, 29 when He set a limit for the sea so that the waters would not violate His command, when He laid out the foundations of the earth. 30 I was a skilled craftsman beside Him. I was His delight every day, always rejoicing before Him. 31 I was rejoicing in His inhabited world, delighting in the human race.
There is indeed a scriptural principal that we use to establish what is true with regards to God’s word and it is this:
It is by the testimony of two or more that a thing is proven or established. When looking harder at what Moses wrote here at Genesis 1:1. Can we discern that these Scriptures are all speaking about the same thing. God created his firstborn then the heavens next the earth.
What does science have to say about the beginning of creation? What did the famous Einstein have to say about it?
Einstein did not believe in God as taught by the church, he did propose the following theory back in the 1905 explaining the enter workings of the world around explaining time and space us as a special relativity: E = mc2
He basically believed our universe could be explained as energy equals mass times the speed of light. This is no longer a theory, but a working formula used around the world.
Another way to explain this equation would be as: Light was taken, then folded upon itself (or slowed down) to create the three-dimensional world that you and I live in. Let us put definitions upon what we are talking about to help us visualize what we are saying.
God being that of dynamic energy (Isaiah 40:26) is represented by the E in the Einstein formula. The M in the formula is the physical Matter found in the universe. C2 represents the Christ or Word of God who uses the energy of God, folding it in upon itself (squaring or slowing it down) to create the physical universe. Christ becomes the Master Worker of God (Proverbs 8:30) as the scriptures explain as the beginning of God’s creative works. E / C2 = M
Now that we have scripturally proven the beginning of creation and explained the use of Einstein’s scientific formula that is used by mankind to explain our physical universe as respect to time and space. I would like us to move into the deeper meanings and not the re-examining of the definitions of the Alaph Tav (את) because we have already done that through the writing #526 entitled: The Beginning and the End, found here in this blog site. For those who may not have read this article; you may want to before you move on, simply click on the hyperlink to go there.
The Deeper Meanings
God has encouraged mankind to search for Him by means of his Scriptures. He has left clues about who He is and what He will accomplish. He has sent us messages by means of the angels, then by the prophets, lastly by means of a son who becomes the Savior for all who will call upon him. 1 John 4:9-15, Philippians 2:9-11
Now we will examine three scriptural examples of the Alaph Tav = את as found in the Scriptures:
Jeremiah 29:13…You will seek Me (Alaph Tav = את) and find me when you search for me with all your heart.
Isaiah 53:6… All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord (God) hath laid on Him (Alaph Tav = את) the iniquity of us all.
Zachariah 12:10… Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, and they will look at Me (Alaph Tav = את) whom they pierced. They will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for Him as one weeps for a firstborn.
These three Scriptures use the Alaph and Tav (= את) as the object pronoun for the English language. Remember what we learned about the Alaph and Tav, that it has a pictorial meaning as the Leader of the Covenant. This would make it a compound noun for the English language. In the Hebrew language the object pronouns are used as suffix, and they are attached to a verb.
However the Hebrew grammar does use compound nouns, but it uses a different rule which indicates the possession in the relationship referred to as being in a constant state. The exception to this rule this: When combining two nouns in the constant state it can create a new and distinct meaning not directly translatable from the individual words. (There you go, this is what we call a smoking gun.)
If we truly want to know more about God we do have to seek him, not just with our mind but with our heart. The Scripture say that knowledge puffs up, but it is love that builds us up. 1 Corinthians 8:1
I would encourage you to stop reading and do a quick little prayer and reread those three passages of Scripture, asking yourself who is being considered here? What is the point of these three verses? How does this affect me?
So, how did Christ identify himself to his disciples, and how did it affect them?
I Am
When Christ called attention to himself by saying “I am” it was with respects to a function, purpose, and responsibility that he was given. Most of these expressions that Christ said “I am” we will consider from what the apostle John wrote about.
John 6:35-40… “I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to Me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in Me will ever be thirsty again. 36 But as I told you, you have seen Me, and yet you do not believe. 37 Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 39 This is the will of Him who sent Me: that I should lose none of those He has given Me but should raise them up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of My Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
In this passage of Scripture Christ identifies himself as the bread of life, the manna or “the bread of Angels” as they called it in the time of Moses. God had it provided for the nation of Israel in the wilderness for the 40 years they sojourned. What the people should have learned back then was that it is God that always provides; he will sustain our lives as Deuteronomy 8:3 points out.
When Christ was tempted by the devil to make bread and eat it after he had fasted for 40 days, he quoted a Scripture, a principal that we do well to remember as well. That it is not by bread alone that man is to be sustained but it is by the word of God that one keeps living. Luke 4:4
Christ identified himself as the provision (bread of life) that came down from God, by which mankind can be sustained in life. Christ came to teach and to educate those who would listen. He became the light for the world, the one to open up the eyes to understand God’s word. Isaiah 61:1-2
John 8:12… Then Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”
When Christ said “I am the light” he refers to the prophecies that help people identify him as being the one spoken of in the Scriptures. Isaiah 9:2, 51:4
The light represents understanding or truth, the one that walks with Christ will have truth and understanding. More is required from us than just casually walking with Christ it has to lead to a point and time where we also need to be introduced or approach God, and Christ makes the way for this to happen.
John 10:9… I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.
John 10:14… I am the good shepherd. I know My own sheep, and they know Me.
In these two passages of Scripture Christ referred to himself as the door or the way and the good shepherd. God’s people are referred to as sheep and as the master of the sheep or shepherd. We look to Christ to help us reach the pastor safely. So, to no one can come to God except through Christ he will lead us there.
The apostle Paul makes the point that Christ has become the way or approach as the high priest for the house of God so we can receive forgiveness for our sins as found at Hebrews chapter 10.
John 14:6… Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Here Jesus spoke very directly to his disciples close to the end of his earthly life; he was trying to help them appreciate that he was leaving. He was departing from this physical world to the spiritual one, from this life of now to the everlasting life that was coming.
Next Christ was able to demonstrate how he was the way the truth and the life by means of the resurrection that God provides.
John 11:21-27… Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. 22 Yet even now I know that whatever You ask from God, God will give You.” 23 “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. 24 Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live. 26 Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die—ever. Do you believe this?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she told Him, “I believe You are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world.”
The Conflict Escalates
The religious leaders of that day kept denying the signs that God was providing for the nation of Israel. Their resistance to the teachings of Christ was to prove deadly for him.
John 10:32-38… Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. Which of these works are you stoning Me for?” 33 “We aren’t stoning You for a good work,” the Jews answered, “but for blasphemy, because You—being a man—make Yourself God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Isn’t it written in your scripture, I said, you are gods? 35 If He called those whom the word of God came to ‘gods’—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36 do you say, ‘You are blaspheming’ to the One the Father set apart and sent into the world, because I said: I am the Son of God? 37 If I am not doing My Father’s works, don’t believe Me. 38 But if I am doing them and you don’t believe Me, believe the works. This way you will know and understand that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.”
In Christ’s ministry he always hinted that he was God’s son by the signs he gave and the Scriptures he quoted. He wanted the spirit of God to reveal to the people who he was. The religious leaders of that day rejected him as being God son, and Christ rebutted them. These religious leaders were denying the works of the Holy Spirit with their words and their actions. Christ acted righteously when he pronounced the woes on these people. Luke chapter 11
Next Christ identified himself as a production of God’s way, something cultivated and planted by God when he referred to himself as the true vine.
John 15:1… “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vineyard keeper. 2 Every branch in Me that does not produce fruit He removes, and He prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me.
By Christ calling himself the true vine he was encouraging us to remain connected to him. By the association of being in union with Christ we could produce good fruit, something that God was looking for in our lives. The ability to produce anything good apart from Christ would not be possible. We also should have the mindset of allowing ourselves to be readjusted or trimmed up as it were.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is proving to be the I am, the true one (את), to help us get the will of God done. The apostle Paul called Christ Jesus the amen or the so be it. 2 Corinthians 1:20-22
Amen yes so be it. Come Lord Jesus, you who comes in the name of the Father the Leader of the Covenant and the seal of God!
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