As I was studying the book of Revelation, I started to explore this name of God: Alpha and Omega. In Greek, Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the alphabet. This name represents Jesus Christ. It teaches us that he encompasses everything from the beginning to the end. It is inspired by Old Testament teachings such as Isaiah 44:6 “Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.”

Of course, Alpha and Omega are Greek letters. Greek is the language of the New Testament.

In English we might say, “He’s everything from A to Z.”

There is a similar notion in Hebrew. Aleph and Tav are the first and last letters in the Hebrew alphabet. So, we could translate Alpha and Omega into Hebrew and say that Jesus Christ is the Aleph Tav. However, in Hebrew they have a slightly expanded notion of this concept. The Hebrew letter Mem is near the middle of the alphabet. Truth in Hebrew is spelled, Aleph, Mem, Tav. Which in our alphabet would be something like emet. This word means absolute truth and is referred to as the “Seal of God”. This word is used 127 times in the Hebrew scriptures. For example Exo 34:6 “The LORD, the LORD, God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth."

Let’s also recall that “truth” is another name for Jesus Christ. John 14:6 “I am the way, and the truth and the life”. 

So, emet is twice a name of Jesus. It is the beginning and the end, just like “alpha and omega” and it means “truth” which is a name of Jesus.

This gets even more interesting if we look at the proto-Hebrew letters. Ancient Hebrew was based off hieroglyphic-like pictographs which over time evolved into Hebrew letters.

So, Aleph means ox. I have seen secondary meaning of strength or leader. (The picture is pretty obviously an ox.)

Mem means water and has secondary meaning of chaos or blood. (The picture best suggests water.)

Tav means cross, mark, sign (of covenant). 

(This use totally predates Christianity and the symbol of the crucifixion. In ancient cultures a + or x was used like a tally mark much the way we use a check mark now. This is often felt to be the mark mentioned in Ezekiel to mark God’s people. Ezekiel 9:4 “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.” This also is touched upon extensively in The Book of Revelation. Furthermore, since tav is the last letter of the alphabet it also symbolizes “complete” So, the mark means the mark of God’s covenant. Those with this mark are completed or perfected. I believe that holding one’s arm at a right angle could be considered as a form of this symbol.)

If we put those three together, we could make the following combinations:

Strong, Blood, Covenant (that’s plenty of symbolism for me right there)

Or… Ox, Water, Sign

Now, check this out:

When this baptistry is in use the symbols come together to form a word.

The baptistry is a pictogram!

Aleph, Mem, Tav: emet or truth or “Seal of God”

These symbols are amazing to me. The baptistry actually spells a name of Jesus Christ!

In the painting in the temple the ox is very prominent up front as a representative of the animals and as the Aleph. The water (Mem) is in the midground. The rainbow is the sign of the covenant as the Tav.

This is probably just a coincidence, but it seems kind of curious, so worth mentioning:

The numeric value of Aleph, Mem, Tav is 1+40+400= 441

7 and 3 are both numbers with significance.

7*7*3*3=441

Make what you will of that. 7 squared times 3 squared would be symbolically interpreted as more perfect and more holy.

How often do powers of numbers show up in symbols?

Probably not very often, but there is the famous 144,000 from Revelation. 12 squared times 10 cubed