Page 241 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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220 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
Comments
Some other explanations may be found at
http://www.bayit02.freeserve.co.uk/html/small_letters.html, which is dedicated
to the small letters in the Torah, and provides some more interpretations. In par-

ticular, this Web site refers to the explanation given by the Baal Haturim ( “owner
of the Turim”), a person so named after the book he had authored (Rabbi Jacob

Ben Rabbi Asher, Ha-Rosh , 1269–1343). The book is dedicated to explaining
words, phrases, or even entire verses of the Torah in the realm of remez (allusion),
rather than in the realm of peshat (simple meaning of the verse), which is the field

of the Peirush HaTur HaAruch. The Baal Haturim explains the small alef in this
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way: Moses was a very humble man, and he wanted va-yikra written without
the aleph, conveying a sense of chance meeting, as with Balaam . However, God
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insisted that this meeting was deliberate, so the right word was va-yikra (“and the
Lord called” unto Moses). The compromise is the small aleph.

16.1.2 Extra and Missing Letters

Extra and missing letters abound in the Bible, and they have been the subject of
much scholarly deliberation. One example was already given in section 1.2, where
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we referred to the fact that maiden (naarah), namely a woman who has not yet
known a man and therefore her fertility not yet proven, is written without the
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final hei, contrary to regular Hebrew grammatical rules. Similar cases are teomim
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(twins), written as tomim (Gen. 25:24), where two letters are missing (alef and
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yod), and reshit (beginning), where the letter alef is missing (Deut. 12:11).
Extra letters strangely implanted in a word (where they should not be) are also
abundant in the Bible. We discuss these cases in the following subsection.

16.1.3 Differently Read than Written
Some words in the Bible are differently written than read. It is an old Jewish tra-
dition, well rooted in Jewish mysticism, that wherever a word is read differently
from the way it is written, the read word expresses the superficial meaning of

the object that the word represents, while the written word expresses the inner
meaning, which is sometimes hidden to the naive observer. The Gaon of Vilna
(1720–97) explains that the written expresses the “internal and true meaning” of
the word, while the read word expresses the “outwardly appearance.”
In the Bible, the written word appears within the biblical text, while the
read word appears at the page margin, opposite the line where the written word
appears.