YUD - 10

 

Exodus 6.6 -- Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.

Some letters are bigger than others. Such is the letter "YUD," which is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alpha-beyt.  Yud is the first letter in unspoken name of God, the Tetragrammaton, YHVH. 

Yud is the tenth letter. It's gematria value is also 10. After Yud, each let­ter’s gematria increases by 10 instead of 1. Yud is 10, kaf is 20, lamed is 30, mem 40, and so on until you get to Qof 100 (10×10).

The number 10 is quite significant in Judaism. Throughout the teachings of Torah, Talmud, Kabbalah and Chassidism, the number 10 is a fundamental building block for every aspect of Creation:

Counting to 10

God gave many creatures ten fingers and ten toes. There are the 10 Utterances of Speech through which God created the world. Next come the 10 generations from Adam to Noah, and the 10 generations from Noah to Abraham. There were 10 plagues that G‑d brought upon the Egyptian people, and 10 miracles that He performed for His people to save them from those plagues. G‑d challenged the Jewish people with 10 tests in the desert. Last but not least, we have the 10 Commandments.  

God loves math and the number 10 holds a special place in mathematics. 10 forms the foundation of the widely-used decimal system. The Metric system is based on multiples and factors of 10. 10 plays a key role in other advanced mathematical concepts.  

Letter Association

The letter Yud is spelled out י-ו-ד (Yud Vav Dalet). 

The early (pre-modern Hebrew) pictogram shape of Yud is an outstretched arm/hand. 

Moses reminds the people that God had led them out of Egypt with signs, wonders, war, a mighty hand, and an outstretched arm (Deuteronomy 4:34). Moses later repeats the parallel reference to God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm in Deuteronomy 5:15. Moses reminds God that the people of Israel are God’s people and that He had brought Israel out of Egypt “by your great power and your outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 9:29). Moses challenges the people that they have experienced God’s greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm (Deuteronomy 11:2), and in his final reference to God’s outstretched arm, Moses reminisced that God had brought Israel out of Egypt with a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, terrors, and signs and wonders (Deuteronomy 26:8).

There are numerous other times when the Tanakh speaks of God's arm/hand at work:

Jeremiah 21.5 -- I myself will fight against you with outstretched hand and strong arm, in anger and in fury and in great wrath.

Jeremiah 27.5 -- "It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the men and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomever it seems right to me.

Jeremiah 32.17 -- ‘Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.

Ezekiel 20:33-34 -- "As I live, declares the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out I will be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out.

When the Torah is read, a Torah pointer called a "Yad" is used to to help follow one's place without touching the Torah with our own hands and possibly  smudging the ink.

"The right hand of God" is a phrase that appears frequently in the bible. The Hebrew word for hand is יָד (Vav Dalet). It sounds like "YOD." In early Hebrew, Vav is pictured as a nail and Dalet is a door. A "Nail" and a "Door" have significant implications in the Christian Gospels. 

A Word About the 5x2 Commandments

The are 10 Commandments on two tablets. Why are there two tablets?

We are taught that the first 5 relate to Man's relationship with God, while the second 5 relate to how we treat one another. You might say, in the first 5, we are to Love God and in the second 5, we are to Love one another.  Here is an interesting detail. In the Hebrew, the first five commandments contain 146 Hebrew words. In the second five commandments there are 26 words. Since I like the way God reveals truths in math, I look for clues from numbers, such as we have here with 146 and 26. 

I can tell right away that 26 is the gematria value of YHVH.  By the way, 26 is 13x2 and 13 is the gematria value of the Hebrew word for Love. 

For the number 146, for "some reason" I turned immediately to Psalm 146. I encourage you to read the entire Psalm!  It so happens that there are exactly 10 verses in the 146th Psalm. The 10th verse reads:

"The Lord will reign forever! Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Hallelujah!"

In Hebrew, the first word in Psalm146, יִמְלֹ֚ךְ begins with a Yud. The word means "He will reign." The second word is יְהֹוָ֨ה (YHVH).

The Hand of God

In the Book of Daniel "the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote." This didn't happen in a dream and there was room of witnesses who saw this happen. We know a "human hand" can't write all by itself, thus this is clearly a supernatural event. The general thought is that this was God's hand at work. Which is to say that God operated in human form. Think about that!  

In the Book of Daniel in verse 5.5, the English "...king saw the palm of the hand that was writing," is written in original Hebrew as follows:

מַלְכָּ֣א חָזֵ֔ה פַּ֥ס יְדָ֖א דִּ֥י כָֽתְבָֽא

I enlarged the word for hand. Notice the Hebrew letter "Aleph" א after יְדָ֖ in the word for hand. The word hand is not spelled with an "Aleph," but there it is. This is significant. 

The design of the Hebrew letter "Aleph" is considered to contain TWO "Yuds" (5x2) within it's structure. You might say there are 2 hands in 1 Alpeh. One "Yud" is visualized as representing the "upper realm" and the other the "earthly realm." The upper "Yud" is often interpreted as representing the hidden or ineffable aspects of God, while the lower "Yud" symbolizes God's revealed presence in the world. (On earth as it is in heaven.)  The upper and lower "Yud's" are separated by the letter "Vav," the symbol of a "Nail" which connects the "Yuds."  Hebrew sages describe the "Vav" between the upper and earthly realms as a "chute" which brings the upper realm down to the earthly realm. 

The scene from Daniel is even more amazing to me because the letter "Aleph." I have blogged about the letter 'Aleph." My understanding of "Aleph" is that it is very related to Daniel 5.5. Here is link to my post about this letter -- "The Holy - 1."

Too much more to say...So in conclusion:

I'm tempted to write about how important "hands" are to so many things in life, not only the scriptures, but that would make this blog post way too long.  I'm sure you get the idea. So I will end with one of the most memorable scenes in the entire Bible from the Book of Daniel.

Daniel 5.5 -- Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. 

Even the king should watch in awe when the hand of God has something say!  

In Hebrew the word for awe and fear are the same, יראה pronounced "Yirah." This is King Belshazzar’s reaction to the "hand" writing in Daniel 5.6. 

"Then the king-his color changed, and his thoughts frightened him, the belts of his loins became untied, and his knees knocked one against the other."

"Belshazzar’s Feast” by Rembrandt

Fortunately ....

"You will keep in perfect peace (Shalom shalom) those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you." Isaiah 26.3