Song of Solomon, Acts, Revelation

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof ?

Revelation 5:1

Tav (), the name of the twenty-second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, means a mark, sign, or cross. In the ancient script it was written alternately as and , the first being identical to the classic form of the Cross of Christ. Gesenius notes that this letter referred to “a sign in the form of a cross branded on the thigh or neck of horses and camels.” God used this letter to mark his faithful in the vision given to the Prophet Ezekiel:

And the Lord said, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark (, Tav) upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark (, Tav); and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.

It is here that we come to an ultimate understanding of the overall structure of Scripture and an answer to the question: Why is the entire Bible built upon the Number 22?

The ancient Rabbinical tradition calls Tav the Seal of God, the Seal of Truth, and the Seal of Creation. Rabbi Ginsburgh, in his online article on Tav, identifies the seal as truth (, emet), spelt with the first, middle, and last of the sacred letters. He then says:

The last letter or seal of the word emet, "truth," itself - the seal of G-d's seal - is the letter tav, simple faith, the conclusion and culmination of all twenty-two forces - letters - active in Creation.

Could the truth shine forth more plainly? Could God have made it any simpler? For nearly two thousand years the truth of God has been lifted high upon the steeples of Christian churches throughout the world. It is the sign of the Cross!  

Emet (truth) also is an anagram of m'eth (), which can be read as From Aleph-Tav. This coheres with the universal intuition expressed in such words a "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God." Truth falls short if it includes less than the whole, from Aleph to Tav. Likewise, all truth ultimately comes from God, who identifies Himself as the beginning and the end, which is the Aleph and the Tav. It is the eternal foundation of the biblical structure.  

Tav, God's Seal, governs Spoke 22. This manifests in the distribution of words cognate with "seal" upon the Wheel. This graph represents the result of searching the entire King James Bible for all such occurrences:

As the graph makes clear, the vast majority of occurrences of seal and its cognates in the Bible come from its last book. This is because Revelation describes both the opening of the book "sealed with seven seals" (Revelation 5.1) and the sealing of the 144,000 from the tribes of Israel with "the seal of the living God" (Revelation 7.2). The significance of this word distribution can not be overstated. It is a simple demonstration of God's careful design of the Bible in accordance with the structure and symbolic meaning of the Hebrew alphabet as revealed in the text of Scripture and explicated by the ancient Rabbinical tradition.   

The last book of Cycle 1 prefigures the great themes found in the last book of Cycle 3. Just as Revelation explicitly proclaims a promise of everlasting life for the faithful and a warning of fiery judgment for the unbelievers, so ends Cycle 1 in the final verses of the Song of Solomon: 

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. 

The links between Love, Death, and God's Seal () are many and profound. As it is written, 

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 

And again, 

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 

And in the most significant sense, Jesus Christ spoke of His own death as his glorification, and His great work that He came into the world to accomplish.

The fundamental Hebrew word for death is (mavet). When this is prefixed with the letter Aleph, we arrive at the verb emuth () meaning I will die. This differs from emet (truth) by the insertion of the vowel-letter Vav. Death and the definitive phrase "The Truth" are both subsumed in the same numerical category:

The Number 446	The Truth (, ha'emet)
	Death (, mavet)

The Bible declares:

Ps 33.4: the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth 

Ps 111.2: The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. His work is honourable and glorious: and his righteousness endureth for ever.

The exact phrase written in the latter verse is:

The Works of the LORD (, Masah YHVH) = 446 

This mathematically integrates with the The Truth, in precise agreement with the verse just quoted:

The Truth (, HaEmet) = 446

The Truth () also is an anagram of (Mah Eth) meaning "What is Aleph Tav?" The answer, therefore, is implicit within the question. 

Tav, as the Seal of Creation, relates back to Genesis when "God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." This further integrates the Number 7 and the Number 22 which govern the geometric structure of the Word (7 canonical divisions distributed upon the Wheel of 22 Spokes.)

Endless echoes ring through these concepts of the Seventh Day, Rest, Death, and the Truth. They reflect the unutterable gravity of the Truth, Life, Death, and creative Work of the Lord God Almighty. They are worthy elements of much meditation. 

The Number 446	The Truth (, ha'emet)
	The Works of the LORD (, masah YHVH)
	Death (, mavet)

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

Genesis 22

As we have repeatedly seen elsewhere, the chapter structure of various books of the Bible such as Genesis, Isaiah, Matthew Revelation closely coheres with the pattern of the Canon. This is nowhere more evident than here in Genesis 22 which contains the first occurrence of two fundamentally important root words in the Bible:

- Ohav, translated as lovest

- Yachid, translated as only 

These are cognate with the Aleph-theme words Ahavah (, Love) and Echad (, One) - discussed at length in The Unity Holograph - which naturally integrates with their debut occurring in Genesis on Spoke 1.    

The finer resolution manifests in the chapter structure of Genssis. The First ( - God - Genesis) and Last ( - Cross - Chapter 22) come together here in Genesis  22  with the debut of these two roots in conjunction with a father’s sacrifice of his only son.

This is the essence of the Gospel, encoded in perfect harmony with the overall structure of the Canon, familiar to all who have received the knowledge of God: 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Yet there is more. The pattern of the Genesis 22 prophecy links strongly to the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ on multiple points:

• As Christ returned to life three days after His sacrificial death so Isaac was returned alive to his father three days after God commanded his sacrificial death. 
• As Christ bore the wood of the Cross so Isaac bore the wood that was to be used for his sacrifice. 
• When Isaac saw the wood and the fire, he asked "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering." His father answered "God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering." In Genesis 22, God provided a ram. The prophecy waited some thousands of years before receiving its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ when the Lamb of God went to His Cross, to His Tav and declared, "It is finished!" 

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? … For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.

Psalm 22

The reality of prophecy and of the divine inspiration of Scripture is no where more clearly displayed than in the Psalms where the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ is foretold in Psalm 22, the Psalm of the Cross. Every theme of the Bible is united here in this sacred passage which God indexed so carefully, and so obviously, with the Number 22. 

Every aspect of Christ’s sufferings is seen in this Psalm, and His separation from the Father when He bore our sins is heard in the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He, the King of Glory, willingly became “a worm”, “a reproach of men, and despised of the people” so that we who were lost might find grace and forgiveness through His sacrifice. This is what the Bible is all about. It is the axis of the Wheel.

In Johns description of the Cross, we read (John 19:30):

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Just as Tav completes the alphabet, so Jesus completes His work upon the cross with the words “It is finished.” 

All four gospel relate vinegar with the death of Christ. The receiving of vinegar was the sign that marked the time of the death of Jesus. We have the identity:

Vinegar (, ozos) = 400 = Tav ()

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:20

Searching the entire King James Bible for all occurrences of the set (open, voice, knock*) yields but one verse other than the one above. In the Song of Solomon, the voice of our beloved Lord awakens the heart of his slumbering wife:

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

She is his sister, for he is the “Firstborn among many brethren”. She is undefiled because He has cleansed her with His own blood. She is his love, his dove, and his divine head is filled with the heavenly plans he has for her. She is His beloved, the Church, the Bride of Christ. This yields another KeySet linking the books on Spoke 22:

Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?

Isaiah 66

The privilege of the Christian is not merely to know, but rather to be the ultimate purpose of God’s creation. Why did God create the heaven and the earth? To create a dwelling place, not of dead stones, but of living stones. To create His Bride. 

The verse above is quoted in one and only one verse of the Bible, Acts 7.29. Thus, it is found only on the first and the last Spokes of the Wheel, just like the divine declaration of God as the First and the Last. 

But upon closer examination, we see that it first occurs in Chapter 66 of Isaiah, which corresponds to Spoke 22 of the Wheel, so we have another KeySet linking the chapter structure of Isaiah with the Spokes of the Wheel:

The Throne represents God’s presence in the world (represented by the Footstool), thereby fulfilling the eternal Promise to “dwell with men” and completing the great work of God.

And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.

Revelation 19.6

The Hebrew word for a Bride is Kallah () from the root Kol (), which means all or whole. It is where the man finds his completion, just as the Bible and all reality is consummated when God receives His Bride, the Church. This is the primary theme of Spoke 22, and manifests in the major themes of all three Cycles:

1. Song of Solomon: The Marriage Song, when a King receives his bride. This is the most physical manifestation of the theme.
2. Acts: The Birth of the Church, the Bride of Christ, the Eternal King.
3. Revelation: The Marriage of the Lamb, when Christ receives His bride. 

The word Kol (all) is intimately related to Eth (, Aleph-Tav) through a natural symmetry on the Wheel. Beginning at the center, follow the figure 8 to see how Aleph-Tav transforms to Kaph-Lamed, (, ALL):

This is wisdom of Hebrew language, which God designed in harmony with His other great creations, Man and the Cosmos. 

The Seventh day, the consummation of the Week, is:

The Sabbath (, HaShabbat) = 707

Note the integration of the semantic and numeric values.

The Number 707 also relates to the ancient rabbinical teaching that treats the Sabbath as a Wife, a man's consummation and completion:

His Wife (, Eshto) = 707

This last phrase of the last verse in the last book of Cycle 1 (Song of Solomon) also yields the value 707:

Upon the mountains of spices () = 707

What better way to end the Marriage Song and the first Cycle of Aleph-Tav? Indeed, this is the image of the end of the Consummation of Creation, when Christ will receive His Bride and the Universe will enter into its everlasting Sabbath. We have a three-fold set: