Every now and again as I’ve searched and meditated on Jesus involvement in the Old Testament I come across something baffling, by which I mean I don’t really know what to make of it. There is a clear reference to Jesus in someway but the “why” is not so clear or the reference is so deeply hidden you would assume know one would ever find it, except of course someone clearly has, or we would be none the wiser.
One of those strange references is a cryptic statement about Jesus hidden in the text of Leviticus 21:10. The verse reads:
“The Priest who is the greatest of his clan, on whose head the anointing oil (messiah oil) has been poured...”
It goes on to instruct this great messiah-ed Priest to take a holy virgin bride and to keep his offspring pure. It also tells him not to unbind his head nor to tear his clothes.
Obviously there is a loose kind of connection between this priest and Jesus, Jesus family on his mother’s side where from the tribe of Levi, then married into the tribe of Judah by his Grandparents. And the Old Testament hints at the coming Priest who is technically not from the tribe of Levi, like Samuel and David.
Jesus of course will take a bride without spot or blemish and he continuously keeps his people pure.
On the Cross, his clothes where kept un-torn and his head was bound by strands of thorn, we normally think of it as a mock crown but the interweaved branches also mimiced the priestly turban.
But this rather oblique reference to Jesus’ priestly role on the Cross is given far greater emphasis by what is hidden in the Hebrew text. The image below is a screen-shot of the start of the verse from a Hebrew Interlinear Bible, the scale is not great but it allows you to verify what I’m about to tell you.
Now remember Hebrew reads right to left and although the words are written that way above, the word order is English… so I’ve copied the flow of letters for Leviticus 21:10 directly from some Bible software and highlighted some letters which I’ll explain below.
Starting from the second letter of the sentence I’ve highlighted every third letter in red. Compare the top line with the interlinear Bible above it, you can check that while the word order is different the letter order is the same.
Now pulling out the red-letters we get …
Splitting up the words and translating you can see in reverse order…
Hidden in equally spaced letters in this sentence about the Greatest High Priest is the phrase.
See the blood of Jesus!
You see what I mean when I said it was bemusing… it’s obscure, but it is definitely there.
Christen Forster
Christen has planted churches, been a youth worker, mission administrator and church leaders. The author of several books, Christen is now an itinerant minister, helping churches to step into a more deliberately spiritual experience of the Christian life while at the same time firmly rooting their practice in scripture.
© 2000 - 2024 Christen Forster
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