Revelation 1:8
Revelation 1:8 — meaning in the ancient Hebrew
“‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’”
The Hebrew behind the verse
| א Aleph | the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet — drawn as an ox: strength, a leader, God Himself. See the letter → |
| ת Tav | the last letter — drawn in Paleo-Hebrew as a cross: a mark, a sign, a covenant. See the letter → |
| אֵת Aleph-Tav | the two together — the untranslated word that appears inside Genesis 1:1. See the letter → |
What it means
“Alpha and Omega” are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet — John's way of saying the First and the Last. But the claim reaches back further than Greek. In Hebrew, the first and last letters are the Aleph and the Tav, and they appear together — as the word et — inside the very first verse of the Bible.
So the One who says “I am the First and the Last” in Revelation is the same One whose signature was hidden in Genesis 1:1 all along. He frames the whole story: strength at the start (Aleph, the ox) and the cross at the end (Tav).
From the first word to the final page, one Author, one thread, one name written in the bookends of the alphabet.