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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Hastings Dictionary of the Bible: Alpha And Omega
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ALPHA AND OMEGA.—A title of God in Rev_1:8; Rev_21:6, of Jesus in Rev_22:13 [its presence in Rev_1:11 AV [Note: Authorized Version.] is not Justified by the MSS]. Alpha was the first, and Omega the last letter of the Greek, as Aleph and Taw were the first and the last of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Talmud, ‘From Aleph to Taw’ meant ‘From first to last,’ including all between. Cf. Shabb. 51. 1 (on Eze_9:6): ‘Do not read “My Sanctuary,” but “My saints,” who are the sons of men who have kept the whole Law from Aleph to Taw.’
This explains the title. In each instance St. John defines It. Rev_1:8 ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty’ (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ‘the beginning and the ending’ is an interpolation from Rev_21:6, Rev_22:13), i.e. the Eternal, the Contemporary of every generation. Rev_21:6 ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end’; Rev_22:13 ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last (cf. Isa_44:6; Isa_48:12), the beginning and the end,’ i.e. He who comprehends and embraces all things, from whom all come and to whom all return, the fons et clausula, the starting-point and the goal of history (cf. Col_1:17). The ascription of this title to Jesus as well as to God in a writing so early as the Apocalypse strikingly attests the view of our Lord’s Person which prevailed in the primitive Church.
Aurelius Prudentius makes fine use of the title in his hymn on The Lord’s Nativity (‘Corde natus ex parentis’), thus rendered by Neale:
‘Of the Father’s love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore.’
David Smith.