Today, 11/11/11, is Brought to You By the 11th Hebrew Letter

The name of the eleventh letter, kaph, denotes the palm of the hand (or spoon or sole of the foot). It symbolizes the open, giving hand as well as the receiving hand as when we hold our hands open to God to receive His blessings. The tenth letter, yod, also signifies hand, but it is the closed grasping hand. Compare the kaph to the yod – grammatically, yod is attached to nouns to mean “my” and kaph is attached to mean “your”. Picture that in your mind: both letters symbolize an aspect of the hand, the yod closes the hand and grasps and the kaph opens up the hand and gives.

The sound of the letter kaph is like a guttural “ch”, like how the Germans pronounce “Bach”. The letter Kaph is also a word meaning bent, like the shape of the letter and like a spoon, the cupping of the hand, the sole of the foot or palm branches. When kaph appears at the end of a word it takes on a different shape. Like this:

In the alphabetic verses we can see pretty clearly the difference in the yod and the kaph. Proverbs 31: 10 – 31 are the 22 aleph to tav acrostics. Look at verses 19 and 20:

19 In her hand she holds the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
20 She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.

Did you see the difference in what the hand is doing? Pretty cool, isn’t it? There are several key words that start with kaph such as throne, atone, mercy seat, crown, finished, cherub/ cherubim, and glory.

(Parts of this were taken from CROSSING THE SCRIPTURES)