The Hidden Hand of God

1.

The first through tenth letters have the values of one through ten respectively; the 11th through 19th letters have the values of 20, 30, etc. through 100; the 20th through 22nd letters have the values of 200, 300 and 400.

2.

In Jewish prayer YHWH is pronounced adonay (my Lord) because the ineffable name of god is too sacred to be uttered. In the days before 70 C.E., when the Temple was standing in Jerusalem, the tetragrammaton was pronounced only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies of the Temple. How he pronounced it, no one knows. See Choon-Leong Seow, “The Ineffable Name of Israel’s God,” BR 07:06.

3.

For the sake of illustrating the acrostics, we use here a standard system of letters and diacritical marks that scholars have developed to correspond to the Hebrew letters. However, this system does not tell us exactly how to pronounce the Hebrew words. Therefore, following in parentheses, each phrase is rewritten to enable you to say each word.

4.

A late-second-century B.C.E. translation of the book into Greek adds a number of passages and includes the name of God. Those passages have been incorporated into Catholic versions of the Bible. In Protestant versions of the Bible, they are included in the Apocrypha.