Tav

alef-omega-tav

I am starting to compile a chart for the letter Tav.  Tav is the last letter of the Paleo Hebrew alphabet.  In Greek, it is Omega.  The first letter of the Paleo Hebrew alphabet is Alelph which is Alpha in Greek.  So in the scriptures when it says I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, it is at least in part an allusion to those letters being the first and last letters. (Revelation 1:3)

For behold, he comes in the clouds with ten thousands of his saints in the Kingdom, clothed with the glory of his Father, and every eye shall see him. And they who pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth, shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. For he says, I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the ending; the Lord who is, and who was, and who is to come; the Almighty.

So the first two words that Tav appear in are interesting.

The word for “in the beginning” is made of three parts:

Beth often occurs as a preposition in words and usually means “in”.

Rosh in the middle of the word.  It usually means first or head.  Note that Rosh is also the name of a letter and is the same Rosh in the Hebrew holiday Rosh Hashanah which means “head of the year”.

I have -ites as being the suffix but that may not be completely accurate.  Many times when -ites is used, only the letter Yod appears for the suffix.

Yod is often used as a suffix for masculine nouns when making them plural.  Tav is used as the suffix for feminine plural nouns.

So it may be that both suffixes for plurality are being used here (masculine and feminine).

This is the second word in which Tav appears.  Here it is being paired with Aleph.  So it is the first letter and the last letter, the Alpha and the Omega, paired together.  The little line that appears below the word is where the translation in English would normally appear.  So there is no translation when this first appears.

Strong’s concordance says that it is untranslatable.  It occurs in the old testament 11050 times. I always just read it as the English word “at” and it seems to work well.  :slightly_smiling_face:

Tav is also used to modify verbs.  Usually it modifies verbs to future tense and is often translated as “shall”.

Yod is the other letter that often modifies verbs.  Yod usually modifies the verb tense to the past and is often translated as “was” or “were”.

So it will be a bit tricky to find words for Tav since I will need to weed out plural feminine nouns where it appears as a suffix and verbs in the future tense.

I did want to mention one other thing related to the “zt” suffix.

It is in the word House.  This is from Genesis 12:15 as an example:

It appears that Tav is also used for verbs paired with “let” and it stands for the “let”.

It appears when “let” is paired with nouns, a different construct is used.

Here are words with Tav from Genesis 1 and 2 that (except for those where cases it is used as a verb or plurual feminine noun).

This post is part of a series on ,

sourced from .

More On This Topic

Shin – Genesis 1

I find it interesting that the English letter S looks like a Snake (Serpent), is the beginning letter of those two words as well as the word Satan, and makes the same sound as the

Read More »

Shin – Genesis 3 & 4

The paleo-hebrew word for Seth and appointed are the same. “God has appointed me another seed instead of Abel whom Cain slew. And God revealed himself unto Seth”

Read More »

Shin – Genesis 5

When Adam named the animals, he didn’t give them common names but rather consciously reckoned his fellow creatures for their essential natures. The noun שם (shem) means name, fame, and Conscious Knowledge Of The

Read More »

Leave a Reply

Explore Other Themes