The Prophetic Telegraph - No.83A
APPENDIX TO P.T.83
ABOUT "JOTS AND TITTLES"
Rather than have an
overburden of information in the last P.T. I have sensed the necessity of
presenting some factual material here in an Appendix, which can be passed over
by those who don't wish to delve any deeper into these matters of present
concern. First of all I should like to refer to the Hebrew text of Exodus
20:8-11, which is the FOURTH COMMANDMENT, concerning the Sabbath Day. In P.T.83
I said that there were no less than TWENTY occurrences of the little letter YOD
in the text. I was correct - there are certainly NOT less than twenty - in fact
on testing it again I found that I had missed THREE of them! How easy it is to
miss this tiny letter. When the Lord said that "not one jot or
tittle shall pass from the law until all are fulfilled" He
had 23 cogent reasons for not disturbing the Sabbath Law! Looking at it from
this point of view, should we not shudder at the thought of transferring the
Sabbath to another day?
One further point about the
text, and I think this is important. We read "Remember the
Sabbath Day to keep it HOLY." The Hebrew word QODESH,
translated HOLY, means literally "to set apart". The Lord was asking
His people to SET APART the Sabbath Day, and not to treat it like the other six
days in the week. And so we find at the end of the commandment the same words, "Therefore
Jehovah blessed the Sabbath Day and SET IT APART." The
Almighty has SET APART the seventh day of the week, and I can find absolutely
no evidence that He has changed His mind since then. I am quite prepared to
rejoice on Sunday, because of the Lord's resurrection, but I can find no
Scriptural warrant for thinking that God has exchanged the seventh day for the
first day of the week.
The next point concerns our
Lord's words about the commandments. He said that "Not one Yod
or one Tittle shall disappear from the Law." We have looked
at the letter Yod, but what about the Tittle? Rather than write about this, I
felt it would be better to reproduce here what is written in one of the
Appendixes from "The Companion Bible", edited by Dr.
E.W.Bullinger, a Bible which I have found to be a mine of useful information,
and a true "Companion" through most of my years as a believer in the
Lord Jesus.
"Certain letters [in
the Hebrew text] have come down with the text, from the most ancient times,
having a small ornament or flourish on the top. [He gives four examples of what
look like pins sticking into the tops of the Hebrew letters.] These ornamented
letters were quite exceptional, and implied no added meaning of any kind; but
so jealously was the sacred test safeguarded, that the scribe was informed how
many of each of the letters had these little ornaments.
These ornaments were called
Ta'agim, meaning "little crowns". The Greek-speaking Jews called them
"keranoth" meaning "little horns" because of their
appearance. And so in the Gospels they are called "keraia", little
horns. Modern commentators still cling to the traditional explanation that this
"title" is the small projection or corner by which the letter Beth
differs from the letter Kaph, or Daleth differs from Resh. But the Massorah
informs us that this is not the case, and thus tradition is quite wrong.
It was to these Ta'agin the
Lord referred to in Matthew 5:18 and Luke 16:17 when He said that not only the
smallest letter (Yod), but that not even the merest mark or ornament (Tag)
should pass away from the law until all things should come to pas. So our Lord
Himself recognized these Ta'agin, which must have been in His Bible from which
He quoted."