Revelation 1:8: "I AM alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
In the beginning God created Order, (aleph ve tau), a concept. This divine Order manifests itself as
Wisdom, the Logos. Before God spoke a word He created the order which gives meaning to
language, syntax, for a word without a linguistic context is meaningless.
Without syntax His words would, like the earth, also have been chaotic. This
beginning of creation is described in Proverbs 8:22-31:
The Lord created me at the
beginning of his work, the first of His acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at
the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was
brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the
mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had
made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he
established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the
deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of
the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not
transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I
was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing
before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons
of men, (RSV).
In the English translations this original act
of creation is not apparent in Genesis 1:1, but there is an
untranslated word ᾽eth, spelled aleph ve tau with another vowel, as
marker of a direct object, in the original Hebrew of that verse which is the sign
of syntax, Order, the Logos: “In the beginning God created
– (Bereshith bara Elohim – ).” Here
we find that the next word is not the translated words “the heavens and the earth,” but the untranslated syntactical sign ’eth, spelled with the letters aleph and tau.
The essential
original act of creation was, therefore, the creation of Order. That creation is expressed by the word ’eth, that is, aleph ve tau, and was initially demonstrated by the
linguistic act of speaking the Word that brought forth Light as an Ordered sequence.
Light then became the medium through which the raw
material of creation was made orderly. Light, as the
intermediary between the concept and the physical creation, was made manifest
intellectually through the immutable Word of God. It was made manifest
spiritually through the knowledge of God by revelation of Himself. It was then
manifested physically in the creation of the immutable order of the great lights, sun, moon and stars, the
time-indicators.
Time is, above all, the awareness of an Immutable
Order. The immutable order in the motions of the great lights made it
possible for Man to count the units and revolutions of that order. It is this
counting of the order of the great lights that we call Time. This Immutable Order is the prototype of Law, and a proof of the covenant-keeping God. This appears in the word translated
“fixed order,” (RSV), in Jeremiah 31:35, 36:
Thus says the Lord, who gives
the sun for light by day and the fixed
order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the
sea so that its waves roar – the Lord of hosts is his name: “If this fixed order departs from before
me,” says the Lord, “then shall the descendants of Israel cease from being a
nation before me for ever,” (RSV).
The Hebrew for “fixed order” is chôq, primary meaning of which is: “that
which is established, or definite,” in other words, “a law.” It is from the
triliteral root châqaq, meaning “to
cut in, inscribe, decree.”
The same word is
used again in an almost identical context in Jeremiah 33:25-26 where it is translated ordinance:
Thus says the Lord: If I have
not established my covenant with day and night and the ordinance of heaven and earth, then I will reject the
descendants of Jacob and David my servant and will not choose one of his descendants to rule
over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The idea is that a
law, ordinance or decree was carved or written in stone in such a way as to be
permanent. Yet God had a better, more permanent and immutable way to write His laws: to inscribe them upon
the heavens. In the creation account of Proverbs 8 quoted above, forms of the
word choq are translated “drew (a circle)” in verse 27 and “marked out” and “limits” in verse 29. In a similar context Job 26:10 uses the word again when
describing the creation: “He has described a circle upon the face of the waters,”
RSV.
This circle which
God drew in the creation may literally be what mankind perceives as the circle
of the ecliptic. Proverbs describes it as “upon the face of the deep,” while Job describes it as “upon the face of the waters.” In
Proverbs 8:29 He assigned to the sea its limits, chôq, the law for the sea.
In Psalm 148:6 it is the “fixed bound” of
the “waters above the heavens” that
cannot be passed over, as well as the bounds of the sun, moon, and shining
stars. So the great circle drawn in the creation may have been, not only of the
horizons of the oceans of the earth, but primarily that of the great ecliptic
of the heavens, the law for the heavens.
This is further
borne out by the fact that the word chôq
is used to mean “statutes and ordinances,” (Deut. 4:5, 8, 14; 6:24; 11:32; 12:l,
to name a few). Some of these, for example the Passover law, (Exod. 12:24), and the law
for tending the eternal light in the tabernacle, (Exod. 27:22, BH, 27:21 in
RSV) are called a “statute forever,”
or “everlasting law,” (Ges. Lexicon). The words forever and everlasting
are from the Hebrew ‘olam,
usually translated “eternal.” These are ‘olam
laws; ‘olam perhaps should include
the meaning “infinite,” referring to both time and space.
Job 14:5 applies these immutable, (‘olam), laws to Man: “You have appointed his bounds (chuqaw, a
form of chôq) that he cannot pass over.”
These bounds are time-bounds, 14:13: “O that thou wouldst appoint me
a set time (chôq) and remember me.” He sees that these
laws of the heavens, these time-bounds, rule the earth, though Man cannot
control them: 38:33:
Do you know the ordinances,
(chûqoth), of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? (RSV).
To return to the
use of choqaq, it is used in Isaiah 30:8 and Ezekiel 4:1 to mean “to engrave letters
and figures on a tablet,” that is, to write.
It is translated to the Greek graphein, “to write,” perhaps “to delineate, to paint,” in Isaiah
49:16 and Ezekiel 23:14, (Ges. Lexicon s.v.).
A word parallel to
choqaq is the word chaqah, meaning “to represent, imitate,”
(BDB). Here we have the basis for
the philosophy that the heavens are to be reflected or represented on the
earth; that the signs of the heavens are to teach us and guide us. They
represent the eternal, immutable law of God and are a witness, as a written
record, to His covenant, the law for Man.
Can a man defy the order of the universe? Can he change the celestial movements of the sun, moon and stars? If not, then why should he think that he can change the Ten Commandments? God's Law is immutable, unchangeable. It is the Law of the Order of Creation. It is represented graphically in the order of the alphabet, as a symbol of the universal Law. And Jesus is "Alpha and Omega," "Aleph and Tau" the Wisdom of God, the Beginning of Creation.
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