This is why some people are fascinated by the Bible Codes.

GENESIS 1: 22-26

The Hebrew text above is one example of why many people believe in the phenomenon of the Bible Codes.  I must admit that I tend to be a skeptic about things like this, but you can see why this would intrigue people.

Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl (1903-1957), the driving force behind the Bible Codes movement, found the following in Genesis 1:22-26; the name of Abraham is spelled out (from the top line down, enclosed in the added boxes) by the letters in the passage with each letter of the name separated from the preceding letter by forty-nine (seven times seven; seven was a sacred number, Genesis 2:2, 4:24, 21:28)) intercalary letters.  In each of the forty-nine letter sequences, אֱלֹהִים (elohim/God, backlit in gray) appears.

 In the midrash Bereshit Rabbah (68, 11f), Rabbi Nehemiah said, "The Holy One, blessed be He, united His name with Abraham; with Isaac too he united His name."  

One of the names of God is "Yahweh" (in biblical Hebrew this is represented as HWHY, read from right to left).  Remember that the ancients believed that names and even the letters of which the names were composed carried meaning and power.

When God confirmed His covenant to Abram by declaring that Sarai's son would be the long-promised heir, He inserted himself (the "H") into their names, giving them new and suddenly different lives.  Abram became Abraham; Sarai became Sarah.  Isaac means "he laughed" which is what elderly Abram did when God told him that he and and his very old wife were going to finally have a son. 

The text (Genesis 1: 22-26) into which this insertion of the name of Abraham occurs says nothing about Abram.  He wouldn't be born until centuries later.

"And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.  And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

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There are often odd spacings and other abnormalities in the text when Hebrew and other Semitic languages like Arabic are inserted into a text.  Microsoft Word insists on reversing the letter order to conform to English usage (unintended ATBASH?)  Word processors need special software to properly handle these alphabets; without the software you have to try to trick Microsoft Word which doesn't always work.

He Laughed

     "The Holy One, blessed be He, united His name with Abraham; with Isaac too He united His name."  Rabbi Nehemiah in Bereshit Rabba, 68, 11f.

     In Genesis, God changed Abram's name to Abraham and the name of his wife from Sarai to Sarah.  In the posts for October 6th and 7th I had some thoughts about this.  Rabbi Nehemiah's writings are certainly not scripture, especially for a Protestant Christian, but the quote above raises an interesting question.  What could it mean that God united his name with Isaac?

     God told Abraham and Sarah that the heir would not be Ishmael, Abraham's beloved son by his wife's Egyptian slave woman, but a new son by the very old Sarah.  They both laughed out loud.  Some commentators try to make this a laugh of joy or an exclamation of surprise, but the Bible says Abraham fell down laughing. (Genesis 17: 17-19)

      God told them the son would be named Isaac (Yitzhak = Hebrew = "he laughs.")  This could have been a reference to Abraham's laughter.  Maybe God laughed at them for their silliness in not believing that He could fulfill His promise even with old folk like them. 

Abram to Abraham; Sarai to Sarah, Part Two

     The renaming of Abram and Sarai occurred during the time when God told Abram/Abraham that his beloved late life (very late life) son, Ishmael, the son of Sarai's Egyptian slave, Hagar (Genesis 16), would not be the promised heir.  The heir would be another, yet unborn, son with the infertile and aged Sarai as the mother.

     Light on the meaning of this may come post-biblical Jewish tradition.  In the midrash, Bereshit Rabbah (68, 11f), Rabbi Nehemiah said, "The Holy One, blessed be He, united His name with Abraham; with Isaac too he united His name."  

     One of the names of God is "Yahweh" (in biblical Hebrew this is represented as HWHY, read from right to left).  Remember that the ancients believed that names and even the letters of which the names were composed carried meaning and power.

     When God confirmed His covenant to Abram by declaring that Sarai's son would be the long-promised heir, He inserted himself (the "H") into their names, giving them new and suddenly different lives.

     Through their son, Isaac, Abraham and Sarah were made the ancestors of multitudes and the human ancestors of the Messiah, the Redeemer of the world.  God's name, inserted into their own, was the divine confirmation of this honor. 

Abram to Abraham; Sarai to Sarah, Part One

     (The next few posts will be about the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah.)  

     The ancient Israelites (Abram's family and people were not yet Israelites but were their ancestors) believed that a name was not merely a designation of a person but that the name itself carried meaning, and in the case of God, extreme power.  That is why they never said God's name ("Yahweh," HWHY read right to left) out loud, instead referring to Him as "Adonai," "the Lord." (I'll explain in a later post how this led to the "modern" error of referring to God as "Jehovah.")

      The power and meaning of names was believed to extend down to the level of the individual letters.   The mystical Hebrew tradition said that God created the universe by manipulating the letters used to create the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and that He dictated the Torah to Moses letter by letter.  (This is the basic underlying idea developed in the book, Cracking the Bible Code, which I will discuss in a later post.)

     The name "Abram" in Hebrew means "exalted father" and was changed by God to "Abraham," meaning "father of many."  The ending "-im" is a plural form.

"Neither shall thy name anymore be called Abram, but thy name sall be Abraham: for a father of many nations have I made thee." Genesis 17:5.

     The name of Abram's wife "Sarai" in Hebrew means "princess"and was changed by God to "Sarah," also meaning "princess," or perhaps "Princess." (There is no capitalization in Biblical Hebrew but my meaning will become clear in the second part of this article.)

"And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be." Genesis 17:15

     What could have been the reason for the name changes?  More tomorrow.