HOME                                                            

johndbrey@gmail.com

© 2015 John D. Brey.

Isaiah 6:13 implies that like a tree that's been cut down but remains alive --- Israel too will be cut down but remain alive. A couple specific trees are mentioned in the passage: trees whose "substance" (KJV) remains in them even if less than a tenth of the stump is all that's left. Trees who reproduce even from a stump.

"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit" (Isaiah 11:1).

A few chapters after Isaiah speaks of tree stumps capable of coppicing new life ----though less than a tenth of the original stump remains---- the Prophet speaks of a branch producing fruit by means of something like biological coppicing occurring from a circumspect stump on the body of a male Jew (Jesse).

This is all old hattan so to say. . . What's worthy of a new exegetical look is the word for "substance" or "stump" in Isaiah 6:13. The Hebrew word is "messebet" מצבת. BDB and Gesenius say it means a "stump" or "pillar" . . . with a particular emphasis on a religious statue, monument, or symbol. BDB adds a personal memorial, "a stone set up and anointed as memorial of divine appearance." ----- Wow. A "stump" associated with a theophany of God. A "stump" that's a personal memorial to God's appearing. A "stump" anointed with blood (as Jewish patriarchs were wont to anoint stone monuments to God).

Sages are quick to suggest that at every circumcision a theophany of God occurs. Sages have been quoted saying that the blood of the circumcision can anoint the cloth wrapped around the Torah scroll. It's placed on the infant’s lips . . and symbolically marks his parents. The circumcised stump is itself anointed with the blood of the ritual. Here in Isaiah 6:13 we're treated to a "stump’ (מצבת) which the Hebrew experts claim is a monument, pillar, stump, altar, where a theophany of God occurs, where blood of a sacrifice is spilled, where a "personal" vision of God occurs.

But the Prophet speaks of this "stump," this theophanic altar, as a form of coppicing, such that new life is going to rise out of the dead stump. In other words, the Hebrew experts make it clear that the Prophet is using a word that implies "circumcision" when he speaks of trees cut down to the stump. . . . Ok. . . So what about going deeper than BDB and Gesenius? What about looking at the deepest strata of exegesis: the letters themselves; the lifeblood of exegesis?

מצבת
מצ–בת

Massebet breaks down into two words: מצ (mem-tsaddi) "matzoh" and בת (beit-tav) "virgin daughter." -----The womb of a virgin daughter is the oven where the matzoh will be baked. Matzoh being bread baked without "leaven." "Leaven" (shin-alef-reish) being an anagram for the "firstborn" (reish-aleph-shin). As pointed out many times, matzoh is bread of an afflicted pregnancy. The organ that should cause the rise in the womb is afflicted. It's become a stump. It no longer rises to the occasion of causing the womb to rise.

Making bread is euphemistic for making love throughout the Tanakh. Natural bread rises. . . . As does the organ that kneads the dough. But matzoh is supernatural bread. The organ that rises to make normal bread is a stump when matzoh is made. Isaiah 6:13 speaks of a remnant of grace that will come out of an afflicted pregnancy: a pregnancy whose produce is matzoh (bread of an afflicted pregnancy).
 

Words can be broken down more than one way. While Massebet breaks down into the words for "matzoh" and "daughter" (as is the case above) it can also break down to speak of "Mot" (the serpent of death) מת as the "home" ב of the "righteous one," צ . In other words, the word mem-tav (mot) is the word for "death." Death -- mot --- mem-tav מת, surrounds the tsaddi צ (which letter is representative of the "righteous one") as his very "home" ב (the letter beit spells "house" or "home").

In the Tanakh, every genuine Jewish woman is perpetually a virgin since the Jewish groom is emasculated under the chuppah, as the most important element of the Jewish wedding: as the very signifier of Jewish identity. The Talmud and Jewish midrashim point out (Yoma 2a; Shabbat 118b), that a man's wife is his "house" and, or, "home." When their betrothed she's still a bat בת. But after he's circumcised under the chuppah ----as the consummation of the Jewish wedding ----the mark of circumcision becomes her glorious ornamentation: בת becomes בית.

In Hebrew letter symbolism the mark of circumcision is the yod. So after the chuppah the bat בת becomes beit בית. The bat בת is no longer desolate בתה. The house is now indwelt by the firstborn conceived through the blood of the serpent rather than the serpent's seed. Because of the sin of phallic-sex in the Garden (causing the Fall) the womb became a tomb, the place of judgment דן, death, mot מת, the place where the original sin is passed-on to the firstborn (except in the Pass-over).

For this reason the Jewish woman, who's the "house" of her husband, is the "house" beit ב of judgment דן. The tav ת is not only the mark of "judgment" דן (din =dalet-nun) but the tav is a Hebrew ligature composed of the extended nun ן and the dalet ד. Squeeze the extended nun up against the dalet (forming a "ligature") and you turn the two letters of the word "judgment" din (dalet-nun) into the one letter signifying the quintessential "judgment" (since the tav -- composed of a nun and a dalet ---was originally a cross). The Jewish daughter/bride is the “house of judgment” בת. But it’s the serpent who is judged, rather than the firstborn, as would be the case in a non-Jewish conception.

To say that every Jewish woman is ---ritually speaking --- perpetually virgin, goes to the very heart of the most foundational symbolism in the Torah. Genesis 2:5-6:

And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his mouth the breath of life . . ..

In the Hebrew, if not the English translation, there's a number of clear symbols which reverberate throughout the rest of the Tanakh. "There was not a man to till the ground." After the Fall the serpent is made to slither on the ground and Adam is made to "till the ground from which he was taken" (Gen. 3:23). "Tilling the ground" is associated with the original sin (phallic-sex) such that we have Adam condemned to "tilling the ground" in order to eat his bread (Gen. 3:19). His "bread" is made from tilling the ground. It's leavened bread in that the serpent is what Adam uses to till the ground to make his bread.

Prior to Adam's sin a "mist" or "dew" אד lies on the surface of the soil (like manna); and it's from the mixture of this "mist" or "dew" (or manna) this mud, or apar (ayin-pey-reish) that God creates the first Adam (prelapsarian Adam). --- In other words, Adam isn't formed from the "tilled earth" ("earth" being spelled alef-dalet-mem-heh vs. ayin-pey-reish). He's formed from the mud that arises when the "dew" or "mist" and the "earth" (adamah) combine in the stead of the future "tilling" of the earth associated with the serpent's belly (so to say) and Adam's labor --- both opening up the earth to make leavened bread, and opening the womb to raise Cain.

In this formative and fundamental symbolism "mist" and "dew" do not enter "tilled" earth (which comes only after the phallic-Fall). The mists and the dew mix with the un-tilled earth to form sinless Adam. The first Adam doesn't come from the tilled earth like all of his offspring. He comes from mist and earth mixing in a pre-tilling manner. Adam's name is suggestive of the nature of the "mist" or "dew," that rather than entering the earth to form him, remains on top of the earth almost as though it were an ornament rather than the sort of seed that must go into the earth or come out of the earth.

In Hebrew Adam's name means the blood of the alef, or ox. Alef---dalet-mem. Blood is spelled dalet-mem such that Adam's name means the blood of the alef (the alef being a pictogram of the ram of God created before the foundation of the world). . . Adam was red-skinned. Because he was created from the blood (dam dalet-mem) of God.

  

Jesus implied that he was manna. He was created like the first Adam, with God's very blood א–דם, in a process that didn't include tilling the earth. In his own mind, at least, Jesus was the second Adam, the original son of Eve and Yahweh (who Eve mistook for Cain) ---conceived before Eve's earthen body was tilled by the serpent in order to birth Cain.

When the groom crushes a wine glass under the chuppah a red mist from the ordeal lands on the bride's dress transforming the virgin bride into the prelapsarian "earth" ----the virgin (pre-toiling) adamah. The dress becomes the apar (ayin-peh-reish) which, when combined with the blood from the wine glass (shin-peh-kaph-heh), the sapkah, affects the consummation of another Adam formed in the likeness of the prelapsarian Adam.

In ritual, and now in reality two [sic], the Jewish virgin is the biological emblem of the pre-toiled earth from which Adam was formed prior to the earth being opened by a rod endowed with teeth with which to both open the earth and spread seed. The Jewish virgin is not supposed to have her body opened with a rod with teeth and seed spreading abilities. She's supposed to form a firstborn male prior to her body being tilled by a post-Fall son of Adam. Her bridegroom has supposedly sided with God against the serpent such that his very gift to his bride is the breaking of the rod with which Adam first tilled the soil, the serpent looking to slither into the pages of history in the privycy of the most holy place on the human body.

Messiah is said to be born (or conceived) on Tisha B'Av. Therefore, the crushing of the wine glass under the chuppah, even if it's said to represent the destruction of the temple, still represents the conception of the first actual Jew --- Messiah. When the wine glass is crushed it represents circumcision, the sapkah (privy member), which is a lambskin flask ש–פכ–ה, is crushed, and blood is spilled. The blood represents the final sacrifice before the temple is destroyed (the veil torn). The last offering. It's given to the bride as the gift of salvation for her and the firstborn now conceive in her womb as God's offering to the groom. A remarkably fitting recompense for his (the groom's) particular sacrifice.