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Hebrew Roots · letter 11 of 22

Kaf

The open palm: glory, priesthood, and the word for covering over.

How the shape travelled: three historical stages

How sure we are of this ancient picture

Well established

Original sign

An open palm with the fingers spread.

Paleo-Hebrew

Wrist and three fingers, fanning off one point.

final form

Modern square

The letter as every printed Hebrew Bible sets it.

Stage 1 has no Unicode encoding, so it stays a drawing, simplified from the copies published by the scholars who studied the inscriptions themselves: Gardiner, Cross, Naveh, Hamilton. Ancient scribes varied, and no two carvings cut a letter exactly alike. Stages 2 and 3 are real Unicode text.

Sounds like

K with its dot; without the dot, a rasping kh made in the back of the throat: the sound at the end of the name Bach. At the end of a word it is written differently: ך, with a long tail dropping below the line.

Written k in scholarly books.

Its number

20

letters carried number values from the Hellenistic era on

Its name means

palm

Final form

ך

the shape it takes at the end of a word

Kaf is the open palm: not the fist and not the whole arm, but the flat of the hand, the part you hold something in, or lay on something, or press down with. It is one of the five letters that change shape at the end of a word, dropping a long tail below the line.

It is also the letter Hebrew uses to say "like." Glued to the front of a word, a single kaf turns it into a comparison: "as a shepherd," "like the dew." Every simile in the Hebrew Bible begins with this letter doing that job.

And it carries three of the heaviest words in Israel's worship: kavod, glory, which literally means weight; kohen, priest; and kaphar, to cover over, the verb behind the Day of Atonement. One letter, and the whole business of standing before God with something between you and Him.

Where Scripture itself plays with this letter

Nahum's alphabet stops dead at kaf

The opening of Nahum runs down the alphabet (aleph, bet, gimel) and then, at kaf, it stops. Half an alphabet and no more. Scholars are split on why, and this room does not pick a side. One reading says the breakdown is the point: the poem is about a whirlwind and an overwhelming flood, and the form collapses the way the city does. The other says the text simply came down to us damaged, and there is no design in the gap at all. Both are live positions held by working scholars. What is not in dispute is what you can see: the alphabet starts, walks halfway, and quits.

The day of covering over

Kaphar is the verb for the Day of Atonement: to cover over, to wipe away, to make things right between two parties at cost. Its noun, kapporeth, names the lid on the ark of the covenant that English Bibles call the mercy seat, and that is where the blood went once a year. "For the life of the flesh is in the blood… it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul." The whole day, and the whole argument of Hebrews about it, sits on a word that starts with the open-palm letter.

The kaf stanza of Psalm 119: the one where he runs out

Verses 81 to 88 are kaf's eight, and they are the darkest stanza in the psalm. It opens "My soul fainteth for thy salvation" — the first word, kaltah, means to be used up, spent, finished. Three verses later: "I am become like a wine-skin in the smoke" — a skin left hanging over a fire until it is shrivelled and useless. He is still waiting on God's word at the end of it, but he has stopped pretending he is fine.

Words that begin here

כָּבוֹד

kavod — glory

Literally weight. God's glory in Hebrew is His heaviness: what has substance when everything else is light.

Open the word→

כָּפַר

kaphar — to cover over, to atone

The verb behind Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement: the one day a year the high priest went inside.

The Day of Atonement→

כֹּהֵן

kohen — priest

The man who stands between. Israel had one order of them; the church is called a whole kingdom of them.

Open the word→

כּוֹכָב

kokhav — star

"There shall come a Star out of Jacob" — Balaam's oracle, read as messianic ever since.

Open the word→

The eight verses that are Kaf’s own

Psalm 119 is the alphabet walking down the longest chapter in the Bible. Every letter gets eight verses, and every one of those eight verses begins with it. Verses 81–88 are the Kaf stanza — eight lines that all open on כ. Every line stands open below, with one preacher’s comment on it directly underneath.

  2. My eyes fail, looking for Your promise; I ask, “When will You comfort me?”

    Psalm 119:82→

    “Mine eyes fail for thy word,.... Either with looking for the Messiah, the essential Word, that was to be, and afterwards was made flesh, and dwelt among men; or for the fulfilment of the word of promise, on which he was made to hope; but that being deferred; and he believing in hope against hope, and looking out continually till it was accomplished, his eyes grew weary, and failed him, and he was just ready to give up all expectation of it; see Psa 77:8; saying, when wilt thou comfort me?”

    John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:82→

  4. “How many days must Your servant wait? When will You execute judgment on my persecutors?”

    Psalm 119:84→

    “"How many are the days of Your servant? When will You be avenged of them that persecute me?" [Psalm 119:84]. In the Apocalypse, [Revelation 6:10-11] these are the words of the Martyrs, and long-suffering is enjoined them until the number of their brethren be fulfilled. The body of Christ then is asking concerning its days, what they are to be in this world, and that no man might suppose that the Church would cease to exist here before the end of the world came, and that some time would elapse in this world, while the Church was now no more on earth; therefore, when he had enquired concerning the days, he added also respecting the judgment, showing indeed that the Church would exist on earth until the judgment, when vengeance shall fall upon Her persecutors. But if any one wonder why he should ask that question, to which when asked by the disciples, their Master replied, "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons;" [Acts 1:7] why should we not believe that in this passage of the Psalm it was prophesied that they should ask this very question, and that the words of the Church, which were so long before uttered here, were fulfilled in their question?”

    Augustine of HippoExposition on Psalm 119 (430)on Psalm 119:84→

  5. “The arrogant have dug pits for me in violation of Your law.”

    Psalm 119:85→

    “The proud have digged pits - The Vulgate, Septuagint, Ethiopic, and Arabic, translate this verse thus: “They have recited to me unholy fables, which are not according to thy law.” They wish us to receive their system of idolatry, and the tales concerning their gods; but these are not according to thy law. The Anglo-Saxon is the same: They quothed me the unrightwise spells; but no so so law thine.”

    Adam ClarkeCommentary on the Bible (1832)on Psalm 119:85→

  6. “All Your commandments are faithful; I am persecuted without cause—help me!”

    Psalm 119:86→

    “All thy commandments are faithful - Margin, “faithfulness.” The idea in the Hebrew is that they are worthy to be relied on. They are founded in truth, and they should secure our confidence. They persecute me wrongfully ... - Hebrew, a “lie, “or “falsehood.” That is, There is a “lie” or “falsehood” at the foundation of their persecutions. Those persecutions are not based on any just views of what I am, or of the treatment which I ought to receive at the hand of my fellow-men. They charge on me tilings which are not true, and they act accordingly. See the notes at Psa 119:78.”

    Albert BarnesNotes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)on Psalm 119:86→

More voices on these same eight verses2

  • “For I am become like a bottle in the smoke,.... Like a bottle made of the skins of beasts, as was usual in those times and countries: hence we read of old and new bottles, and of their rending, Jdg 9:13, Mat 9:”

    John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:83→

  • “The figure of “a bottle in the smoke” is essentially oriental; we must therefore go to the East for its explanation. This we will supply to our hearers and readers in the words of the Author of the Pictorial Bible: “This doubtless refers to a leathern bottle, of kid or goat-skin. The peasantry of Asia keep many articles, both dry and liquid, in such bottles, which, for security, are suspended from the roof, or hung against the walls of their humble dwellings.”

    Charles SpurgeonThe New Park Street Pulpit, Sermon No. 71: “A Bottle in the Smoke” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1856)on Psalm 119:83→

How readers have meditated on this letter

✧The open handa devotional reading

The devotional word-picture stream reads kaf's open palm as covering, blessing, giving, and allowing, a hand held out rather than closed. It is worth saying where the appeal comes from: the letter really does open kaphar, "to cover over," and a covering hand is a natural thing to see there. It is still a reading laid on the shape of a sign, not the reason the word means what it means. Hebrew lexicons derive kaphar from its usage, not from its first letter.

Read this way by: The modern "Hebrew word pictures" devotional stream (Frank Seekins; Jeff A. Benner) — named, not endorsed

✧Language failing halfwaya devotional reading

Preachers have long made something of Nahum's half-alphabet: the poem sets out to say everything, aleph to taw, and cannot finish, as though the alphabet itself gives out in front of what is coming on Nineveh. It is a moving reading and it may even be what the poet intended, but it is a reading. Serious scholarship is genuinely divided over whether the break is design or damage, and this page does not settle it.

Read this way by: Homiletical reading; the scholarly split is Johnston, "A Perfectly Broken Acrostic in Nahum 1?" (JHS) against Floyd, "The Chimerical Acrostic of Nahum 1:2-10," JBL 113 (1994) — both cited, not quoted