Elohim's Aleph-Bet (Letters) - The Hey

Shalom, friends. my name is Chadwick Harvey. You've reached Faithful Performance. Thank you so much for joining us tonight as we continue our study discovering the Hebrew letter hey — it is the fifth letter of Elohim's aleph-bet. It is very powerful to understand when we look at the scriptures, which we will tonight. Just like we've discovered with the four previous letters, this letter is telling us a story, and there are many layers to that story. We're giving you one major layer tonight with Elohim's aleph-bet.

If you're not familiar with the aleph-bet, it is read from right to left, starting from the top: aleph, bet, gimel, dalet. In the first four episodes we discovered those four letters, and tonight we're going to discover the fifth, which is the hey. One thing to point out before we get started: look at the difference between the fourth letter and the fifth. The dalet is written exactly like the hey, except the hey has this little yod — this small leg — at the bottom. We're going to get into the understanding of why those letters are written the way they are, right behind one another. As I said, the aleph-bet tells us a story.

Just as the first letter, aleph, represents the Father; the second letter, bet, represents the Son, Yeshua; the third letter, gimel, represents the Holy Spirit; and the fourth letter, dalet, represents the door — the Passover door and the door of our hearts to receive Yeshua the Messiah — so the fifth letter, which we discover tonight, means to look, or behold.

Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us. We hope you've had a great Shabbat. I know it has been cold where I am and across most of the United States, so hopefully everybody is doing well, staying warm, and has enjoyed this beautiful Shabbat of rest with the Father. Without further ado, we'll get into the Hebrew letter of this week.

We'll be doing one of these every week until we finish all twenty-two letters. Five letters have final forms, meaning they carry a double meaning, and we will go through those as well. We're on week number five, and this series should take us to Shavuot, which is May 24th. Thank you so much for being with us — both those joining live and those watching on the replay.

Before we begin, I will say this: studying these Hebrew letters is just an extra layer of intimacy. If you have studied them, you know what I'm talking about. It is that extra layer of understanding in Hebraic thought — or Yah's thought, if you will. It gets your mind transitioned into the Hebrew, the pure language the Bible was written in, and it brings out the deep layers of understanding, like what we're going to get into tonight.

Is it required? No. But if you want a deeper layer of understanding with the New Testament, the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms, these letters are very important to understand in order to receive the pure revelation of what Yahweh wants us to get out of it. These are the words he spoke out of his mouth, made up of the Hebrew letters. The letters make up the words, and they are holy, righteous, divine, and sovereign — he breathed them out of his mouth. Just as Psalm 33 says, he breathed the universe out of his mouth. There are deep connections between the Hebrew letters, the Hebrew words, and the scriptures. Again, it transitions our mindset to the way he originally wrote the Bible, which is in the original Hebrew.

Just like always, we'll start with a scripture that really ties in the meaning of the letter hey, and then at the end of the lesson we will return to this scripture. Once we have the proper understanding, the education, and the knowledge, we'll all have a better grasp of this letter and the impact it has had throughout the scriptures and in the sacred holy Name.

In John 1:29–34 it says: "Behold" — which is the letter hey — "the Lamb of Yah, who takes away the sins of the world. This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me.' I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel. Therefore I came baptizing with water." And John bore witness, saying, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he remained upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'Upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of Elohim."

This is a powerful statement, my friends, from John the Immerser. This is a very great testimony, testifying about the Son of Elohim, Yeshua the Messiah. Look at what he says here. He starts with the letter hey — "behold." Whenever we see that word, it means to pay attention, to look, to wake up and take notice: "the Lamb of Yah who takes away the sins of the world." He says, "This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who is preferred before me'" — the bet, the second letter — "'for he was before me.'"

It has always been remarkable to me that he says "I did not know him," because we know throughout the gospel account that Elizabeth and Mary knew each other, and Yeshua and John the Immerser were cousins. So it's quite amazing that he says he did not know him, "that he should be revealed to Israel." "Therefore I came baptizing with water, and John bore witness, saying, 'I saw the Spirit'" — which is the gimel, letter number three, that we learned two weeks ago — "'descending from heaven like a dove, and he remained upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, Upon whom you see the gimel, the Spirit, descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the gimel, the Holy Spirit.'" "And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of Elohim." Amen and amen.

We'll come back to that passage once we've built more understanding of the letter. But first: the hey is the fifth letter of Elohim's aleph-bet, and its numerical value is five. The number five, as we all know, symbolizes grace, favor, and supernatural power, thus giving the letter hey a heavenly, divine anointing. This is very important — the number five epitomizes grace, favor, and supernatural power. Hey also reflects Yah's creative power, which correlates to the fifth day of creation, when the sea creatures and the birds were created. So this is a highly anointed letter, just as the first four letters are as well.

The meaning of hey is "behold" or "look." We can think of it as someone saying "hey" to get another person's attention — "Hey, how are you doing?" — because that is what the letter truly means: to get the attention of the reader, wherever we are in the Holy Bible. We find this meaning in the New Testament a great deal, particularly when speaking of Yeshua, the Lamb of God, the King of Israel, and in the words of John the Immerser.

The hey exemplifies the mouth, expression, spirit, light, revelation, and the divine and holy breath of Elohim. I'll say that again: hey exemplifies revelation and the divine and holy breath of Elohim. Truly amazing. As the psalmist testifies, "By the word" — the hey — "of Adonai, the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath" — the hey — "of his mouth" (Psalm 33:6). It is very powerful to understand that he created the universe by the hey, and also by the letter we'll discover later in this series, the peh — those two letters go together in a sense. But as far as tonight is concerned: "By the word of Adonai the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" (Psalm 33:6). Therefore, when Elohim created the universe, he spoke it into existence with the letter hey.

You can see this in both Genesis 1 and in what we just read in Psalm 33. It is totally incredible to ponder and meditate upon this great revelation. He spoke the universe into existence with the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which means grace. Grace was upon all of creation, upon all of the universe, by him speaking it out through the fifth letter. The first letter is the aleph. The second letter is the bet — Yeshua. The third letter is the gimel — the Holy Spirit. The fourth letter is the dalet — the door. And the fifth letter is the grace through which he spoke the universe into existence. Pretty amazing things.

The hey is constructed of two vavs — that is the sixth letter — and an inverted, unattached yod that functions as the toe or foot of it. If you look at the formation of the letter, you can see it looks almost exactly like the dalet, the fourth letter, but with that yod present. We haven't gotten to the yod yet — that is the tenth letter — but it is the letter you'll find in every Hebrew letter. It is the smallest letter of the aleph-bet, and yet it is the most powerful one, because every letter starts with or contains a yod. We will look at that more specifically in the tenth lesson. We are on lesson number five right now, so we have five more lessons before we reach the yod.

To say it plainly: the hey is a dalet with a disconnected leg. The sages and rabbis believe that the leg was gifted to the hey from the aleph in order to form it, which personifies the indwelling of the Ruach HaKodesh in the believer. Looking at the aleph, letter number one, there are two yods: one on the upper side of the vav and one on the lower side of the vav within it. The teaching is that the aleph gifted that lower yod to the hey, placing it on the left side of the dalet to form the hey, letter number five. This is what separates the dalet from the hey — and that distinction is what we will continue to explore.