The Strand Study Bible

MATTHEW 5:17

MATTHEW 5:21

1493

Every jot and tittle to be fulfilled 17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, 1 Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. P 19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least

in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven . 20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteous- ness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. 21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, 2 Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the 3 judgment:

1. Fulfilled - Rev 20:11 (World Destruction) (See - Lk 16:17) 2. Quoted from the OT - Exo 20:13 & Deut 5:17 3. or, “death penalty” - Gen 9:6

5:18 This word ( jot ) is the Greek word LZτD ( iota ), the Greek letter i. Iota is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew letter yod , which is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. This word ( tittle ) is the Greek word NHUDLD ( keraia ), which is derived from the smallest grammatical symbol in the Hebrew language. Tittles are diacritical marks in the Hebrew letters, much like our long and short marks that we use over our English vowels. What Christ was stating here is that God directly inspired every letter of every word within the Sacred Scriptures, including the diacritical marks. Arthur W. Pink in An Exposition of Hebrews notes:

In the Scripture everything is of importance; we cannot read and interpret the Scripture as any other book, since Scripture is not like any other book, even as no other book is like the Scripture. The Scripture is among books what the man Christ Jesus is among men… 1

Christ reminded the Jews that, before heaven and earth could pass , He would prove to them (not us, but them) that not one jot or one tittle of His Word would go unproven , and that all would be fulfilled . In other words, Christ promised the Jews that He would not return until they (the Jews) recognized that the Law (which they were used to write) was proven 100% accurate. Welcome to the “fulfillment” of the final sign before the return of Christ –God proving to every Jew that the Law, which they were used to write, is truly inspired and preserved ( Psa 12:6-7 and Lk 11:51 ). Ever hear of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl? He was a brilliant Czechoslovakian Jewish scholar in astronomy, mathematics, and Judaic studies who discovered the Bible Codes. Right before WW1, Rabbi Weissmandl found an obscure reference in a book by a fourteenth-century rabbi known as Rabbeynu Bachayah that described a pattern of letters encoded within the Torah. This discovery inspired Weissmandl to begin exploring for other examples of codes hidden within the Torah . In other words, if he found the first letter of a significant word such as Torah , and then, by skipping forward seven letters he found the second letter of the word Torah , he continued to skip forward the same number of letters to see whether or not the complete word Torah was spelled out in the text at equally spaced intervals. Rabbi Weissmandl described this phenomenon as “equidistant letter sequences” (ELS). What he discovered was confirmed almost forty years later in 1988 in Israel. By means of an intricate analysis of the Hebrew text of the Bible by mathematicians and computer scientists a phenomenal discovery was made at Hebrew University using sophisticated high-tech computers. This scientific discovery revealed a staggering level of mathematical design and intelligence, which could only have been produced by a supernatural mind, providing unshakable mathematical proof that the Bible was truly inspired by God. The incredible data bulldozes forever the false claims by liberal scholars and skeptics that the Bible was written and edited by uninspired men and that it is full of errors and contradictions. What these mathematical and scientific researchers discovered were complex “hidden” codes beneath the Hebrew text of the Old Testament that reveal an astonishing knowledge of future events and personalities that cannot be explained unless God inspired the writers to record His precise words. After exhaustive statistical analysis by these mathematical and computer statisticians, thousands of detailed and precise patterns and codes have been discovered “hidden” beneath the Hebrew text of the ancient Scriptures. The Apostle Paul said in I Corinthians 2:9-12:

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things , yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God .

“ Things ” here refer to “spiritual truths.” Paul concluded here in I Corinthians 2 that the Word of God contains within its pages “ things ” that are so deep, so profound, so precise, and so eternal that man has not even begun to scratch the surface of what lies beneath this Book called the Bible… that is, until now. Due to the invention of high-speed computers, developed within the last twenty years, researchers have been able to examine every possible combination occurring in any of hundreds of possible intervals (from every second letter to every 500 th letter, for example) throughout the millions of Hebrew letters in the Old Testament. For example: * Take Genesis 38, which describes the history of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar, who gave birth to two sons, Pharez and Zerah. Hidden within the text of Genesis 38 at forty-nine-letter intervals is the name Pharez and four of his descendants… in chronological order: Pharez, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, and David. The odds against these five names occurring in this passage in the exact, chronological order they lived, are astronomical. Only a supernatural intelligence could have produced the names of all five of these individuals, especially since four of the five hadn’t even been born yet when Moses penned Genesis.