Page 248 - 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 227

Gaon of Vilna that the written expresses the “internal and true meaning,” while
the read expresses the “outwardly appearance,” we may now pursue the Gaon of
Vilna, explaining why the written “line” and the read “line” differ, and how is this

significant.
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We start with the read “line.” The Hebrew kav is correctly written with two
letters:
106 = (6 = ו) + (100 = ק)

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However, in the above verse in the Bible, the word kav is written differently
within the text, though still read the same (how the word should be read is written,
correctly, at the margin of the page, opposite the line where the “line” appears).
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The written kav is
111 = (5 = ה) + (6 = ו) + (100 = ק)

This is a bizarre word of three letters that has no meaning in Hebrew (at least
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not in the way it is supposed to be pronounced here, as kav). Thus, although the
word is read as “line,” it is misspelled in the text, having a third letter added (the
letter hei), supposedly by mistake.
How can this be explained?
The answer is that there are places in the Bible where words appear that are tra-
ditionally differently read than written. This was alluded to in subsection 16.1.3,
where several examples were given. In that subsection, the principle underlying
these incidents, as explained by the Gaon of Vilna , was detailed.
Having this principle in mind, we now follow in the footsteps of the Gaon of

Vilna in reference to the above quotation. Obviously, while the outward appear-
ance is that the “line” has a length of 30 (this is what the text conveys to us),
the “inner truth” is that the length is somewhat different. How much different?
Knowing the importance that the Hebrew attaches to the numerical values of
words, we may suspect that the unknown “true” length, denoted by X, relates to
the outward appearance—namely 30—the same way that the numerical value of
the written word (which represents the “internal truth”) relates to the numerical
value of the read word (which represents “appearances”).
A simple calculation yields

Numerical value of written word / Numerical value of read word =
Numerical value of (הוק) / Numerical value of (וק)
= 111 / 106