Isaiah and the hidden code in Genesis 1:1
Isaiah is an important book in the Bible. There isn’t another Old Testament prophet who speaks so clearly about the work and person of the Messiah or about the future of Israel. What is written in the Old Testament finds fulfilment in the New Testament. And there is a mathematical structure underlying the original text of the Bible that ties the two testaments together. Isaiah unlocks the “code”. Genesis 1:1 is the key.
Isaiah and the hidden code in Genesis 1:1
Isaiah is the first of the major prophets in the Bible. Isaiah is a key book in the Bible. The writings of Isaiah include vital information about the Messiah and about the coming redemption of Israel. Also, as we are about to find out, the New Testament is structurally tied to the Old.
There are 66 chapters in Isaiah. And there are 66 books in the Bible. Co-incidence ?
We might think so, except that there is a clear division in the book of Isaiah. The first 39 chapters are what Bible scholars call Proto-Isaiah. The last 27 chapters start, in the 40th chapter, saying: “Comfort My people ... their hard service is complete ... they have paid double for their sins.”
The mood changes in the second part of Isaiah ... light shines; hope.
The book of Isaiah divides ... 39 chapters and 27 chapters. Total: 66 chapters.
The Bible divides ... 39 books Old Testament and 27 books New Testament. Total: 66 books. In other words, the same structure: 39, which is 3 x 13 (three, one three) and 27.
About two thousand six hundred years ago, Isaiah recorded 16,931 words of prophecy given to him by God. The words are in Hebrew and they are precise.
The Jewish people recognised the importance of the words, and their scribes carefully copied them on to parchment. Copies were made, and then copies of those copies. It was a laborious process. There was no alternative. It would be another two thousand years before the invention of the printing press and the possibility of making exact replicas.
The words of the Bible came down to us, through thousands of years, copies of copies of copies, handwritten ... the originals lost, damaged over time and replaced ... until the time of industrial printing.
How could anyone be sure that what we received is authentic ... faithful to the original? The oldest handwritten copies we had dated back about a thousand years. Who knows? ... maybe they were riddled with errors. The copies were made by men. Men make mistakes.
And then, about seventy years ago, a hoard of ancient copies, mostly fragments, was discovered, hidden in caves around Qumran on the edge of the Dead Sea. Among them is what is known as the Great Scroll of Isaiah.
This Great Scroll of Isaiah is on display in a special area of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Actually, what is on display is a facsimile … a copy. The original is considered so valuable that it is stored somewhere secret and secure.
The Great Isaiah Scroll is the most substantially complete document of all those found in caves at the Dead Sea. The scroll can be positively dated to at least one hundred years before Jesus, so it is, by a very large margin, the oldest known handwritten book of the Bible. And the Isaiah Scroll confirms the original Hebrew writing. It’s a treasure. For many Jews, and for guardians of the modern state of Israel, it represents their most vital national treasure … in effect, it's their title deed to the Promised Land ... in effect, it's their guarantee ... God has promised them salvation, in the land of Israel. They have a document to prove it.
But, here is what we believe will one day become an even greater treasure in the hearts of all Jewish people. There is a mathematical structure underlying the original text of the Bible. And the mathematical structure identifies, and verifies, the original text of the Bible ... every book, every chapter, every verse and every word. And the order they are meant to be in.
The mathematical structure ties the original Greek text of the New Testament to the Hebrew text, producing a complete Bible of 66 books ... each one of those 66 books written by a Jew. And the mathematical structure ties the opening verse of the Bible to the promise in Isaiah of the establishment of the modern state of Israel, and the coming of their Redeemer.
With the New Testament witness of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, and a complete and trustworthy and verified Bible text, the remnant of Israel will come to have bold assurance of their eternal future in God ... assurance based on promises in that Bible, and not reliant on performances conducted by a priestly class of paid professionals, and not reliant on opinion and tradition, but established on the truth of the Word of God.
God will complete what He began. God will make two into One ... Jew and Gentile ... joined, by faith, in Jesus the Messiah ... to live forever in a world to come.
Now to the hidden “code” in Genesis 1 verse 1. When we say “code” we refer to numeric patterns revealed in the text. When we say those were “hidden” we refer to the fact that numbers, as we know them, did not exist way back when the Bible was first written. That's hard for us to get our minds around.
Numerals, figures for numbers, like 1, 2, 3, 4. etc, are so much a part of our lives, and the way we communicate and record, that it is hard to imagine life without them. But, in Bible days, numbers had not been invented. Numbers were developed in India, thousands of years after Moses and hundreds of years after Jesus ... long after the canon of Scripture had been settled. In Bible times people counted with a tally system, and the Hebrew and Greek ancients used the letters of their alphabets as symbols for numbers.
What we are going to see would have been impossible for the writers to have envisioned. But God directed the minds of those who wrote, and God knew what we may now see.
We can now apply a number to each letter of the biblical languages. Every letter of the Old Testament Hebrew , and every letter of the New Testament Greek, has a numeric value.
With that in mind let us look at the first verse of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1). In Hebrew ... "Bereshit bara elohim et ha'shamayim ve'et ha'aretz".
A simple calculation gives us a value for each word. The value of these two words is 999. The value of these three words is 999. The value of these three words is 888. And the value of these three words is 777.
That's remarkable ... 777, 888, and 999 twice. That could not have occurred by chance. That's supernatural.
This same “code” is found in the last chapter of the book of Isaiah. It's a prophecy of the reformation of the State of Israel. (Isaiah 66:7-9)
(7) “Before she travailed, she brought forth; Before her pain came, she gave birth to a male. (8) Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as she travailed Zion also brought forth her sons. (9) Shall I bring to the point of birth and not give delivery?” says the LORD. “Or shall I who gives delivery restrain?” said your God."
On the screen are the words of these three verses in Hebrew. Hebrew is read from right to left. Apply the numeric value of each letter and we come up with a value for each word.
Note: The first four words of verse 7 have a value of 251 + 448 + 49 251. A total of 999. 9 - 9 - 9
The next verse, verse 8, the first words have a value of 50 + 410 + 428. A total of 888. 8 - 8 - 8.
We don't find the pattern in the first words of verse 9, but if we take the first words of each of the three verses, we get 251 + 50 + 410 + 66. A total of 777. 7 - 7 - 7.
And, there is a second occurrence of 999, starting with this word: 26 + 41 + 61 + 95 + 776 = 999. 9 - 9 - 9.
777, 888 and 999 twice. The same numeric pattern (the “code”) that's in Genesis 1 verse 1.
That must be deliberate. It could not have been arranged in the natural mind of Isaiah. The Lord was directing his writing. And the Lord is drawing our attention to the link between the creation account and His eternal purposes for the Jewish people.
Think about the prophecy. Verse 7 says: “Before her labor pains ... before the agony of the rebirth of the state of Israel ... (birthed in war, by the way).
Note the emphasis ... b'terem (meaning before) in the Hebrew words that produce a total of 999. b'terem tachil yalada b'terem ... the first word is b'terem and the fourth word is b'terem ... “before ... before”. The phrase, and its numeric structure, places a strong emphasis on the fact that this individual pre-dates the rebirth of the nation state of Israel.
“Before her labor pains ... before the nation is born again she gave birth to a male ... someone special ... the Messiah. Who else? Jesus has come. Jews need to know this. And Jesus will come again.
Verse 8 then describes the remarkable establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, after nearly two thousand years of separation and scattering. Verse 9 is a promise ... the Lord will have “sons”, a family redeemed and reconciled with Him. And it is sealed with God's “fingerprint” of design in the original Hebrew text, in the last chapter of the book of Isaiah.
You may have seen the feature of 777, 888 and 999 reported before. Seven years ago we did a video entitled “Hidden code in Genesis 1:1”. The video was viewed more than two million times. What we didn't cover in that video, but did cover in later videos, is how the numbers point to Jesus. And what we didn't cover in that video, but will cover now, is that the “code” of 777, 888 and 999 is only the first layer of what is in the first verse of the Bible.
We get the name of Jesus in English, and the way we say His name, out of the original Greek text of the New Testament ... Iesous. The numeric value of Iesous in Greek is 888. 8 - 8 - 8.
If we look at each of these numbers 777, 888 and 999, that first show up in Genesis 1:1, we see that they break down to: 37 x 3 x 7 = 777. 37 x 3 x 8 = 888. 37 x 3 x 9 = 999. Three seven three. Three seven three. Three seven three. And 373 is the numeric value of Logos in Greek.
In the first chapter of the Gospel of John we learn that Jesus is the Logos, the Word. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14). The Logos is a key concept in the New Testament. Logos is the living Word ... Jesus. The number sequence three seven three is an indicator of Jesus, the Logos, the living Word.
With this in mind, we take another look at the first verse of the Bible: There is a mid-word of two letters, and there are three words to the left of the mid-word and three words to the right of the mid-word ... 3 1 3. It's symmetrical. It stands out. Three one three. We are meant to notice a pattern.
In the original Hebrew text of the book of Isaiah there are exactly 16,931 words. 16,931 is a prime number. It is indivisible. It is the 1,953rd prime number. And 1,953 is 31 x 3 x 7 x 3. The pattern seems to be there by design ... 31 3 and 3 7 3. 31 3 ... the structure of words in Genesis 1:1 ... and 373 ... the numeric value of Logos.
Unless this is a huge co-incidence we may conclude that this verifies the word count of 16,931 in the book of Isaiah. And it gets us ready for something else we are about to see.
In Genesis 1:1 the value of the first and last words is 913 + 296 = 1,209 which breaks down to 31 x 3 x 13. 31 3 and 3 13. That must be deliberate.
The remaining five words in the verse, the five middle words, have a numeric value of 1,492 which breaks down to 2 x 2 x 373. That must be deliberate. 373, the numeric value of Logos.
And now to the final feature that ties the book of Isaiah to the New Testament, and ties it to Jesus.
There are 243,115 words in the original text of the Bible up to the end of Isaiah. There are 137,720 Greek words in the original text of the New Testament. Because it is the fulfilment, add 137,720 to 243,115 and we get 380,835 and that breaks down to: 5 x 3 x 7 x 3 x 31 x 3 x 13. 373 is the numeric value of Logos. And the final part of the pattern matches the value of the first and last words of Genesis 1:1. 31 3. 3 13.
It cannot be that this “code” is in the Bible by accident. It is God's watermark in the Scriptures. It proves that He is the Author of the Bible. And it proves that we have the correct texts of the Old and New Testaments.
For the original text of the Old and New Testaments, go to our website: LivingGreekNT.org. And there is a new Isaiah playlist on our YouTube channel.