Maybe this verse has caught your eye. Maybe it hasn’t. I heard someone talk about this verse years ago at a conference in England (Roger Forster is his name—brilliant teacher). He referred to the Hebrew in explaining the verse, and now that I’ve had a bit of training I am finally able to see if what he said checks out.
The startling turn in this verse is the abrupt change from the 1st person (me) to the 3rd person (him) in the middle of the verse. Obviously this is God talking here, but how can we explain:
- How God can be pierced?
- Why would they mourn for “him” if they pierced “me”?
- What’s this business about an “only child” and a “firstborn son”?
I checked out the Hebrew, and though not all translators have rendered it this way (NRSV?), sure enough the change is there. (Here's my translation.)
“They will gaze toward ME, upon the one WHOM they pierced, and they will sound a lament for HIM.”
The cool thing that the teacher pointed out in his lecture that day was that there is a clue as to how the change from ME to HIM occurs. (This is not a grammatical point—only a neat observation.) Between the word that means “towards ME” and the word that means “WHOM” (or “the one WHOM”) stands one little word. It is not translatable. Its function is only to signify that what follows is the direct object.
It is only two letters...but not just any two letters. They are the letters Aleph and Taw, the Hebrew equivalent of Alpha and Omega! The First and the Last!
Could it be that God placed this little, untranslatable word here just for us, so that we could make sense of the verse as we meditated on it? The link between “ME” and “HIM” is God! The Alpha and Omega are present in both.
This insight provides an answer for all the questions above. I’m not claiming this as some scholarly exegetical point, but it sure does light my fire.
Between God and the One Whom they pierced, the Alpha and Omega is found.
