Page 240 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

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CHAPTER 16 SPECIAL LETTERS IN THE BIBLE
CHAPTER 16 SPECIAL LETTERS IN THE BIBLE 219
dalet to an indication that God is on his own in the “Fourth world” (Sforno then
describes the other three worlds).

Va-Yikra 4
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The word va-yikra appears as the first word in Leviticus: “And the Lord called

unto Moses, and spoke to him out of the tabernacle, saying …” (Lev. 1:1).
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However, the word “called” (va-yikra) is written
א רקיו

namely, the last letter, the alef, is smaller than the other letters in the word.
We pursue here interpretations given by most Jewish scholars (like Rashi) who
essentially compare the way this word is written here to the way the Bible describes
how God related to the gentile prophet Balaam . However, we add our own color
to this interpretation.
In section 3.5, we alluded to how randomness is perceived in the Bible. We

briefly repeat this explanation here. The Bible considers the perception of incidents
as happening randomly—and not as an act of the Divine—to be an abomina-
tion, a defilement of God. Various cases were detailed in which God appears to

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people as if by chance, and then the word used is va-yikar (“occurred to meet,”
or “happened to encounter”). One such instance is God appearing to Balaam , the
prophet who was requested by the king of Moab, Balak , to curse the people of
Israel on their way to the Promised Land from Egypt. The translated Bible says,

“And God met Balaam: and he said unto him …” (Num. 23:4).
However, this translation misses the most important message of the verse. The
original Hebrew text does not say that God met Balaam ; rather, God occurred to
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Balaam. The key Hebrew word here is va-yikar, and it is written in Hebrew:

רקיו

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Note the similarity of va-yikar —or, without the conjunctive vav, yiker, to the
English “occur.”
Comparing this with the call of God to Moses (see the previous Hebrew word
from Leviticus), one realizes how the added aleph at the end of the word changes
the whole meaning of the encounter with God: for Moses, this was God calling;
for Balaam , this was God occurring to him!
To draw our attention to this comparison, to the similarity in the structure of
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the words, the biblical narrator probably opted to write the va-yikra with a small
alef.