Jesus declared that heaven and earth will pass away, but his words will not pass away (Matt. 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33; cf. Isa. 40:8). The implication of this statement is that the words of God are timeless. In my opinion, one of the greatest witnesses to the timelessness of God’s words are Bible codes, and even more specifically–modern Hebrew Bible codes. In this article, I will demonstrate how the LORD encrypted modern Hebrew words in topically relevant passages of the Hebrew Old Testament, which speak of things and concepts of modernity that did not yet exist (or were unknown) at the time that these texts were written.
What is Modern Hebrew?
Modern Hebrew refers to the dialect of Hebrew that is spoken by Israelis today. Although it is directly descended from the biblical Hebrew spoken by the ancient Israelites in Old Testament times, the language has changed considerably over time (although not nearly as much as one might expect).
It is important to note that the Hebrew language has not been continuously spoken for 3,000 years. Hebrew ceased to be the native language of most Jews within a couple of generations of the Babylonian captivity. By the time the Jews returned from Babylon to Judea after Cyrus’ decree of liberation, Aramaic had become the new native tongue of Palestinian Jews. However, it is believed that Hebrew nevertheless continued to be spoken as a second language in the land of Judah alongside Aramaic for several more centuries. It began to fizzle out after the Bar Kokba Revolt (132 AD – 135 AD), before finally ceasing to be a living spoken language by the early fourth century AD. From that point until the late nineteenth century, it would survive as an exclusively liturgical language. It was not until Zionism began to gain traction at the end of the 1800s, that Hebrew gradually began to become a living spoken language again. By 1920, it had become the only dead language from the ancient world to ever be resurrected.
The chasm between biblical and Modern Hebrew
It is a known fact that languages evolve over time. The Vulgar Latin that was spoken in Western Europe in the High Middle Ages was a lot different from the classical Latin spoken by Roman orators such as Seneca and Cicero. Likewise the dialect of Greek spoken in Greece today bears little resemblance to the classical Greek of Hesiod and Euripides. In light of such historical examples, it would be logical to presume that the same degree of linguistic transformation must have occurred in Hebrew, but in fact this isn’t really the case.
The fact that Hebrew ceased to be a living spoken language for over 1500 years had the effect of essentially putting it on ice and freezing it in time. Because of this, it simply didn’t have the same opportunity to naturally evolve as much over time as other ancient languages did, and consequentially–the linguistic chasm between between biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew isn’t nearly as wide as one would it expect it to be. The degree of difference between biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew is similar to the degree of difference between contemporary American English and the English of the King James Bible and Shakespeare–clearly two different dialects with notable differences, but no one would dispute that they’re the same language.1
Despite the obvious lines of continuity between ancient and modern Hebrew, there are a number of notable differences between the two dialects. One of the keys areas in which they differ is vocabulary. Modern Hebrew has a far more rich and expansive vocabulary than classical Hebrew. This is mostly due to the fact that new words had to be added to the language when it was resurrected to refer to things and concepts of modernity which either did not exist, or were unknown in biblical times. Modern Hebrew has borrowed a lot of vocabulary from contemporary foreign languages (such as English) to meet this need.
The impact of English on Modern Hebrew
Although English belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, it nevertheless inherited a lot of vocabulary from ancient Greek and Latin. This influence should not be surprising, given that these two ancient languages were both at one time the lingua franca of massive geographical territories–Greek being the lingua franca of the eastern half of the Roman Empire (and later the Byzantine Empire), and Latin being the lingua franca of the Western half of the Roman Empire. All peoples living in the regions where these languages were the predominant language had to have at least some acquaintance with them just to be able to participate in society. It was therefore pretty much inevitable that these two languages would have some degree of influence on other languages.
Ironically, English is to the modern world what ancient Greek and Latin were to the ancient world, albeit on a far more global scale. Thanks largely to British colonial expansion in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, English is today the language of international commerce. I would actually take it even further than that and argue that English is also the language of the emerging global culture. This is largely due to America’s massive cultural contributions to the larger world, and their popularity abroad (Hollywood films, music, etc.). As such, it is becoming exceedingly rare to find people from moderately developed nations who don’t speak at least a minimal amount of English. Given its status as the lingua franca of the emerging global society, it is perhaps not surprising that English has left a mark on other languages spoken all over the world–Hebrew being no exception.
Just as classical Greek and Latin directly influenced English, so too modern English has directly influenced modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew has inherited a mountainous heap of words directly from modern English. Words such as אסטרונומיה (astronomy), המבורגר (hamburger), טלפון (telephone), and הוריקן (hurricane) are all just a few examples of modern Hebrew words that are English in origin–all being exact Hebrew transliterations of the original English pronunciations.
Modern Hebrew Bible codes
ELS Bible codes are not exclusively written in biblical Hebrew. Many of the words and statements encrypted in the Hebrew Old Testament are in modern Hebrew. This is further proof that the author of the Bible codes is none other than God himself, as only God is not bound by the laws of time and space–and accordingly has the foreknowledge necessary to encrypt modern Hebrew words in Hebrew texts written between 3,500 – 2,500 years ago (Job 36:4; 37:16; cf. Acts 2:23; Acts 15:18; 1 Pet. 1:2). In order to get a feel for what modern Hebrew Bible codes look like, let us consider a few examples.
Example 1: Fascism
As the screenshot above demonstrates, the Hebrew word פשיזם (“fascism”) is encrypted twice in Song of Solomon 6:11-7:5. The first encryption occurs at an ELS of every 27 letters, beginning in 6:11 and ending in 7:2, while the second occurs at an ELS of every 30 letters backwards beginning at 7:5 and ending in 7:2.2The modern Hebrew word פשיזם (fascism) is of English origin, as it is simply a Hebrew transliteration of the English word “fascism”.
At first glance, it would not appear to be statistically significant to find a word containing only five letters encoded in the Tanakh–as strings of this length tend to show up encrypted in numerous places in the Hebrew Scriptures just by chance. However, you cannot always judge an encoded text-string by its length, as not all letters in the Hebrew alphabet occur in the Bible at the same frequency. There are a handful of letters in the Hebrew alphabet which occur so rarely that they account for <= 1% of the total text of the Hebrew Scriptures. I refer to these as rare letters. If a given text-string contains even one of these rare letters, the probability of finding that text-string encrypted in the Hebrew Old Testament drastically decreases.
The modern Hebrew word פשיזם contains not just one, but two rare Hebrew letters–pey (פ) and zayin (ז). This makes the likelihood of finding this five letter word encrypted in the Hebrew OT by mere random chance to be unlikely. A search for this text-string at a standard ELS depth of between 2-150 letter skips yields a total of 20 results. Of these 20 positive encryptions, two just so happen to be located side by side in the same biblical passage. This is something that is very often a reliable indicator of deliberate design.
Unless you happen to be a nerdy logophile like myself, you are likely wondering how on earth the word fascism could possibly be related to anything in the containing biblical passage in this example. The key needed to unlock the connection lies in the line of text I have highlighted in purple in the English translation. What does a bundle of wheat have to do with fascism? Simply put, the word fascism was coined by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was the progenitor of the ideology. It is based on the Latin word fascis, which literally means: “bundle.”3
There is absolutely no question that this is an authentic deliberately planted ELS. Not only do we have this word encrypted twice in the same passage which bears obvious topical relation to the encoded text-string, but the two encryptions also just so happen to meet together at the very verse containing the topical relation! Thus, the first encryption begins at verse 6:11 and ends at 7:2, while the second one begins at 7:5 and ends at 7:2. The significance of that is that verse 7:2 is the verse containing the topical relation (the “bundle of wheat” line).
Example 2: Leftism
Fascism is not the only modern political ideology God mentions in the Bible codes. Behold:
As can be seen, the Hebrew word שמאלנות (“Leftism”) is encrypted in Ezekiel 4:9-10 at an ELS of every 6 letters backwards.4The word Leftism could not possibly have occurred in a more topically relevant biblical passage. In the above passage, God is giving Ezekiel specific instructions about what he is to do while he is lying upon his left side for 390 days (Ezek. 4:4-5), bearing the iniquity of the house of Israel.5
Example 3: Atheism
Here we can see that the word “Atheism” is encrypted in Isaiah 45:4-9, right next to the phrase “There is no God” in the plain text of verse 5. Note that the modern Hebrew word Atheism here is a direct Hebrew transliteration of the modern English word “Atheism”, which means it’s pronounced exactly the same way in Hebrew as it is in English.
Although the encoded word is only six letters long in this example, it nevertheless contains 1 rare letter (zayin), which drastically reduces the frequency of the encryption. In total, this is 1 of only 5 passages in the Tanakh where this six-letter string is found encoded at a short-distance ELS. In light of this rarity, the fact the encryption happens to occur in this passage right next to the phrase “There is no God”, makes it obvious that the encryption is deliberate. The purpose of the code appears to be merely to name and define the postmodernist belief system called Atheism. The code should not be taken literally to mean that there is no God.
Example 4: Cars
As one might imagine, modern Hebrew Bible codes are not just limited to modern political ideologies. Such codes frequently mention tangible objects of modernity in appropriate biblical passages, as in the following example:
Here we see that the Hebrew phrase מכוניות ואוכל (“cars and food”) is encrypted in the Hebrew text of Genesis 45:11-26 at an ELS of every 73 letters backwards. The topical relation between the encoded text-string and the containing passage in this case should been fairly self-evident. In the containing passage, Joseph is sending Egyptian wagons loaded with all of the best foods of Egypt to Canaan to transport his father Jacob to Egypt. The encoded text-string is alluding to these food-loaded wagons. In this encryption, God has substituted the modern Hebrew word “cars” for wagons. In so doing, he is deliberately establishing a link between the wagons of ancient Egypt and modern automobiles. The logic undergirding this equivalence is self-evident, as such wagons in ancient Egyptian society functioned as carriages of transportation, just as automobiles do in modern society.
Example 5: Hurricane
Modern Hebrew Bible codes can also manifest as modern terms of meteorology, such as the following ELS in the book of Isaiah:
As we can see, the Hebrew word הוריקן (“hurricane”) is encrypted in the Hebrew text of Isaiah 24:34-25:8 at an ELS of every 94 letters. The modern dialect of the Hebrew tongue inherited the word “hurricane” from modern English. It is a Hebrew transliteration of the word, and is accordingly pronounced the same in Hebrew as it is in English. It is important to note that the English word “hurricane” is a modern term that was not used until the middle of the sixteenth century. Thus we have here yet another example of an encrypted modern word which did not exist at the time that the books of the Old Testament were written. Although the encoded text-string is six letters in length, it contains one rare Hebrew letter–quph (ק), which greatly diminishes the probability of the encryption being a mere random statistical anamoly.
The topical relation between the encoded text-string and the highlighted portions of the containing passage in this example should be fairly obvious and need little explanation. Most of those who live on the east and gulf coasts know that when they happened to be in the projected path of a hurricane, they are often ordered by the governor of their state to evacuate. For those who cannot afford to evacuate, large public buildings are opened as hurricane shelters for people to have a place of refuge from the storm. It should also be noted that the Hebrew word that translates as “blast” in this passage is רוח, which is the Hebrew word for “wind.” This weather imagery fits perfectly with what one might describe as hurricane conditions.
Conclusion
The Bible testifies that God inhabits eternity (Isa. 57:15)–a statement which carries with it the implication that he is not bound by the laws of time and space (2 Tim. 2:9). This is why it is possible for him to declare the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10; John 13:19; 14:29), and to speak of the things which are not yet as though they already were (Rom. 4:17; cf. Isa. 45:21; 42:9). The fact that there are modern Hebrew Bible codes encrypted in topically relevant passages of the Hebrew Old Testament, which speak of things and concepts that were yet unknown when the biblical books were written, attests to this truth–proving that God has perfect foreknowledge of human history, even to the point that he knew exactly how the Hebrew language was going to evolve over the course of thousands of years. As James rightly proclaimed at the council of Jerusalem: “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” (Acts 15:18).
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- If it were theoretically possible to somehow transport a modern Israeli back into ancient Israelite society in the eighth century BC–it is likely that the ancient Israelite would have a very hard time understanding the modern Israeli due to modern syntax, and the fact that the language has acquired so many new words since then. However, the modern Israeli would likely have relatively few problems understanding the ancient Israelites.
- The ISV actually translates the word ערמת as “bundle”.
- “Fascism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed December 3, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism.
- Unlike the word fascism, the modern Hebrew word for Leftism is not derived from English.
- It is also worth mentioning that this may be only part of a larger encoded text-string. If one keeps going and continues counting every 6 letters, the next four letters after the encoded word are: shin, lamed, hay, and mem–which in modern Hebrew would spell the preposition של (used to indicate the possessive), and the third person plural promonimal suffix הם (“their” or “them”). Likewise the sixth letter preceding the encoded word in the plain text is lamed, which in Hebrew can function as a prepositional prefix meaning “to” or “for”. If these are all part of the ELS, then the full intended encryption would be: לשמאלנות שלהם (“for their leftism”).