בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
-Genesis Chapter One Verse One
Its only a small word made up of two Hebrew Letters. It can be pronounced with just one sound, "eth". It is the word אֵ֥ת. It is untranslatable into English. Some would say it is because its meaning is too obscure for English. Our language can do a lot of things, but from time to time it runs into some word out there that is so foreign it just cannot process it. However, I don't believe that this our problem with אֵ֥ת. The problem is that the word means too much.
You see, it is usually viewed as the sign of the definite direct object, not translated in English but generally preceding and indicating the accusative. What does that mean anyway. It means that this is a word that is constantly pointing to something. "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth." In the Greek the phrase goes a little something like this: ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν. In this version God is first and, like in good English, it is in the active voice. God is the actor and acts upon the "heaven and the earth." It works out about that same way in the Hebrew. In reading the Hebrew wrong it would appear that the sentence starts with what we see and know around us, the heavens and the earth, and then proceeds to tell us the author with the little word אֵ֥ת pointing the way. I even read it that way at first. Then I remember when you are reading in the language of God's people, you have to start reading (and thus thinking) backwards. So rather than the world creating a God, we see that the Greek, the Hebrew, and the English translators believe God comes first.
In fact in this little word can be the seen the entire Gospel and good news for us all. It is uncomplicated, unassuming. It is found near the beginning of our story but does not have to be first to show its important. It is with the first words. Does it sound familiar? In the beginning it was with the words that made creation and it was the word that shows who made creation happen. In fact it is made up of aleph and tav. These two letters begin and close the Hebrew alphabet. They are the A to Z. For the Jewish people (and I would hope for Christians as well) the A to Z of life is the Torah. The Mishlei, or as we know it: Proverbs says, "The Torah is more precious than pearls."1 The Midrash states that the "Torah is more precious than the first born." Truly, the Torah is the Judeo-Christians A to Z.
However, we Christians believe in another A to Z. We believe in the Alpha and the Omega who is the beginning and the end. In Christ, Christians have a unique relationship with Torah because in Christ we see that Torah wrapped itself in flesh and walked among us. In Matthew 15 we get the sense that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets. We get the feeling that like a pin-prick on a balloon or a jar that flips in water to finally let it all in, Jesus burst a hole in our world with finite beginnings and finite endings and let the whole of God's Kingdom come rushing in after Him. We are drown by the fact that The ΑΩ put on the clothes of we human beings and, as Gene Peterson puts it, "moved into the neighborhood." The Word that made the world dwelt among us.
So moving away from the letters, we should move towards the word. What exactly does אֵ֥ת do. Well it connects God to the Heavens and the Earth. It is an arrow that shows the flow of how God made the Heavens and the Earth. One might even say that it is the Word that God breathed out to make the Heavens and the Earth. A Word that was with God and somehow this Alpha and Omega became God's presence. All things were created through this word and without it ... well ... you can't have the Heavens and Earth created; at least not without the beginning and the end involved.
This is only what the word אֵ֥ת is and does not even begin to address what that word does. It points. One of the best translations for Torah is "Way." A way is usually something that points us down a certain direction. Here the Torah was pointing towards something ... something BIG. It was pointing us its fulfillment. It was writing about something big that had happened once long ago and was making itself known all over again. It was pointing to itself not as an end, but as that which is waiting to be fulfilled. The Laws, beautiful though they are, could never bring us into right relationship with the Author of creation. The Laws were band-aids to a broken and bruised world that could only see the Torah, and the world that was built on top of it, dimly. So, we ask ourselves, what if this Way became human and walked among us? What then are we to do? The word that God used as the way to create creation that showed He was the creator and pointed to His handiwork is the same Word, Way, Alpha and Omega, Aleph and Tov that we Christians worship and find peace and rest in today.
The early Christians, or People of the Way as they were called, saw all this clearly. They marked the letters Chi and Rho, two other letters that mean their salvation, where they were. It is amazing how two little letters bring us back to a right relationship with אֱלֹהִ֑ים, the Strong God, Elohim, who is so powerful and big that He surrounds the entire universe and so majestic that our words are often forced to do things that only our imaginations can glimpse of, just to speak of Him.2
notes
1 It should also be noted that Jesus once said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl of great value that one would sell everything to possess." I believe a good association can be made between the words of the Torah and the Kingdom of Heaven. Christians and non-Christians can argue the aspects of this for as long as they want, but is dialogue with the Holy Scripture something to be rejected? By no means! If we are to argue about trivial matters and amongst our closest friends, how much more are we supposed to argue about deep matters and amongst God in Heaven?
2 My Greek Professor who loves Hebrew will know about the roots and origins of Elohim, however it is a plural verb always used of and considered as One or perhaps is like how we use the royal singular that speaks of itself in the plural (i.e. Queen Victoria's famous statement, "We are not amused."); and it means powerful and strong.
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