“… shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase” (Dan 12:4, NKJ)
Paul writes in Rom 3:2 of the Jews that “to them were committed the oracles of God”. Thus it is not strange that the secret key to the paradigmatic reading of the Bible was also given to Jews. One such rabbi, Rabbeynu Bachayah, from the fourteenth century, wrote a booklet about reading the Torah in a discursive manner and he thus laid the initial foundation for reading the Word differently. His book did not have much impact until the First World War when Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl used the example of his predecessor to look for other similar codes. He found interesting linguistic laws, for example that there are meaningful word pairs, like hammer and anvil, when looking for the first letter of the first word (in this case h). Presume that in a specific part of the Torah there were 23 letters between h and a, then he counts 23 letters further and gets the letter m, and 23 letters further another m, after the same letter spacing the letter e, and then r, 23 after this an r, with the same number of letters every time until the word “hammer” is spelt. Hopefully you understand these elementary mathematical rows and sequences.
He also, for example, took the first letter of the Hebrew word for law from Gen 1:1, after 50 letters the second letter, after 50 letters the third letter, and after 50 letters the last letter of the four letter word that spells law in Hebrew! The rabbi found that many such words in the Torah were spelt out in specific, spaced intervals. Weissmandl unfortunately did not keep records of his findings, however his students continued with his work in the years following and also experimented with it, especially in post-graduate work at the Hebrew University.
In 1988 three researchers (of which Eliyahu Rips particularly became famous) made fascinating conclusions from a research project whereby this phenomenon of reading the Torah paradigmatically was investigated. Naturally the use of sophisticated, high-speed computers made things much easier and verification was achieved a lot sooner. This research showed empirically that all 300 voluntarily chosen word pairs by ESL (Equidistant Letter Sequence) are found very closely to each other.
A further research project took the names of 34 very well-known rabbis over the centuries and found them in the book of Genesis, each one linked to the date of their death, within the ESL matrix!
The story following this, especially regarding the publication of The Bible Code and The Bible Code II, shook the world; but it all pointed to one thing: that God, through His scribes, “completed writing the words … and they were finished” (Deut 32:24)!
- Sela: What implications does this information have in terms of you reading the Bible?
- Read: 1 Sam 11; Ps 132 ; Luke 8
- Memorise: Luke 8:17
- Going deeper: Read Michael Drosnin’s The Bible Code I and II as well as Jeffrey’s two other books about the subject.
