Most people encounter the Hebrew alphabet simply as the twenty-two letters used to write biblical Hebrew. At the most basic level, that is exactly what they are. Hebrew is a language, and its letters function linguistically. Within Jewish interpretive tradition, however, the letters were also contemplated for their shapes, numerical values, placement, and relationship to the sacred text. Rabbinic and later mystical writers often found theological significance in details that modern readers would easily pass over.

When I started studying Hebrew at Moody Bible Institute and later at the UW Madison Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, it was engrained in my head that care is needed. The meaning of a biblical word does not come from assigning a spiritual definition to each of its letters. Biblical Hebrew still has to be read grammatically, syntactically, historically, and literarily. Later Jewish reflection on individual letters belongs more properly to the worlds of midrash and mysticism. Those traditions can be fascinating and sometimes theologically rich, but they should not be confused with the lexical meaning intended by a biblical author.

The opening word of Genesis provides a good example.

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים
berēʾšît bārāʾ ʾĕlōhîm

Genesis begins with the letter ב — bet. Grammatically, the bet attached to rēʾšît functions as a preposition. The phrase berēʾšît means something like “in the beginning” or, depending on how one understands the syntax of Genesis 1:1–3, “when God began to create.” Nothing in the grammar requires a symbolic meaning for the letter itself.

Rabbinic interpreters nevertheless noticed that the Torah begins with bet rather than aleph, the first letter of the alphabet. Bereshit Rabbah preserves several reflections on this. One observes that the shape of ב is closed on three sides and open toward the direction of reading. The image becomes a meditation on the limits of human inquiry: creation opens before us, while what lies beyond it remains hidden. Another interpretation connects bet with berakhah, “blessing,” since both words begin with the same letter.¹ This is not an alternative translation of Genesis 1:1. It is midrash. The reader begins with the written form of the biblical text and allows that form to generate further theological reflection.

The same instinct becomes much more developed in early Jewish mystical literature. Sefer Yetzirah connects the twenty-two Hebrew letters with the ordering of creation and describes the cosmos through the interplay of letters, numbers, and the ten sefirot.² In that setting language itself becomes part of the theological imagination of creation. Scholars have long noted how strongly linguistic the worldview of Sefer Yetzirah is.³

There is at least a biblical starting point for this fascination with language. Genesis 1 repeatedly describes God creating through speech: “And God said…” Psalm 33:6 similarly declares, “By the word of YHWH the heavens were made.” The Hebrew Bible emphasizes divine speech rather than hidden magical properties in the alphabet, but later Jewish thinkers naturally wondered about the relationship between divine speech, written language, and the letters through which sacred words were preserved.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook takes this kind of reflection in a particularly creative direction in Reish Millin. Written in the early twentieth century, the work meditates on Hebrew letters, vowel points, and cantillation marks as openings into spiritual and theological contemplation.⁴ Kook is working far beyond ordinary grammatical exegesis, yet his approach belongs to a long Jewish tradition of reading Scripture slowly enough to notice even the smallest features of the written text.

That may be the most useful lesson for Christian readers. Hebrew letters should not become a fortune-telling system, and they should not be treated as a secret code behind Scripture. An aleph does not possess one fixed spiritual meaning everywhere it appears, nor does a bet unlock a hidden layer of Genesis inaccessible to ordinary exegesis. Those claims go beyond what the biblical texts themselves support.

Still, Jewish reflection on the letters reminds us how patiently Scripture has been read across the centuries. The biblical world takes words seriously. Creation comes through speech. Prophets consume scrolls. Names carry meaning. Torah is written, memorized, recited, and taught from generation to generation. The first bet of Genesis does not secretly decode creation. It does remind us that readers before us often lingered over the text far longer than we do. There may be something worth recovering in that posture: reading Scripture slowly enough to notice its grammar, its literary shape, its cultural setting, and occasionally even the letter sitting at the beginning of the line.

For those of us who teach, pastor, or simply want to follow Jesus faithfully, there is a pastoral invitation here as well. We live in a culture that rewards speed, certainty, and immediate application, and those habits easily follow us into Scripture. Sometimes we need to recover the discipline of staying with the text before rushing to explain it. Read it slowly. Ask better questions. Notice the words, the repetitions, the structure, the cultural world behind them, and the places that resist easy answers. Not every detail needs to become a doctrine or a sermon point. Some things are worth sitting with for a while. Good shepherding does not always mean giving people quicker answers; sometimes it means teaching them how to become patient readers who love Scripture enough to linger over it.

Notes

1. Bereshit Rabbah 1:10. The passage preserves several interpretations of the opening bet, including reflections on its shape and its association with berakhah (“blessing”).
2. Sefer Yetzirah 1:1–2:6. The work describes creation in relation to the ten sefirot and the twenty-two Hebrew letters.
3. See Tzahi Weiss, “Sefer Yeṣirah” and Its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), especially his treatment of the linguistic and cosmological world behind the text.
4. Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, Reish Millin (London, 1917), especially its meditations on Hebrew letters, vowel points, and cantillation.