There are a total of 2,251 Vav/Aleph/Tav ואת Character Symbols in the entire Tanakh and over one-third (828), appear in the Torah. Now compare that to over 5000 “and” in just the first two books of the Torah and you will get some idea of this Hebrew words uniqueness. Surprisingly the Vav/Aleph/Tav ואת Symbol is quite simply an extension of the Aleph/Tav את Symbol – and the proof of this is examining where they are placed. Those of you who may have a hard time believing this, I would say that the Hebrew letter Vav attached before the Aleph/Tav ואת Symbol does not alter the meaning of an Aleph/Tav את Symbol any more than placing a Vav in front of the Father’s Hebrew Name (ויהוה) alters the meaning of Father’s Memorial Name (Tetragram) in Scripture. If you have never seen this before in Hebrew, there are exactly 100 translations in the Tanakh which are included in this rendition. The translators of the King James Bible simply placed the conjunction “and” in the text as “and ויהוה” when the Tetragram was preceded by the Vav as a prefix.
Note: Just for the record there are also 105 translations of the Tetragram with the Hebrew letter “Bet ב” in front (ביהוה), which translates as “in ביהוה.” There are also 577 translations of the Tetragram with the Hebrew letter “Lamed ל” in front, which translates as “to ליהוה.” NOTE: The word “to” is spelled Aleph/Lamed (אל) in Hebrew 4374 times. There are 24 translations with the Hebrew letter “Mem מ” in front of the Tetragram (מיהוה), which translates as “from מיהוה” and only 4 with the “Kaph כ” translated “as כיהוה”. Only once in Ps 144:15 does the Hebrew letter “Shin ש” appear in front as (שיהוה), which translates as “who שיהוה.” And only once with the “Hey ה” which translates as “the היהוה” in Jer 8:19. All these translations are properly placed in this rendition of the Tanakh. Please understand, the original meaning of these Hebrew letters as a prefix to the Tetragram goes far deeper than the English translation and only by learning what these letters originally meant can we hope to understand what the author was truly trying to express.
Please understand, originally these Hebrew letters meant much more than what they have been translated as. The Hebrew letter “Bet ב” can refer to being inside something, such as a “house” or “body” and the Hebrew letter “Lamed ל” referred to “authority.” The Hebrew letter “Mem מ” referred to the “flow” of something, such as water and the Hebrew letter “Shin ש” referred to “teeth” or “consuming fire.” Case in point: Let’s look at the Hebrew letter “Shin ש” in front of Father’s Memorial Name in Ps 144:15 Blessed is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, who שיהוה is Elohim. The intended meaning of this scripture probably refers to, “Blessed is that people who שיהוה is their Elohim of consuming fire.” This implies that שיהוה Father is looking for people who will humble themselves and obey Him and allow Him to fill them with His spirit.
The fact that the Vav/Aleph/Tav ואת Character Symbol has the same meaning as the Aleph/Tav את Symbol can be evidenced by seeing where it is placed in Hebrew text and by also understanding the meaning of the Hebrew letter Vav. Starting in Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning created, Elohim את the heavens ואת the earth”, we see a precedence being established that will be carried throughout the entire Tanakh implying יהוהFather, both WITH and THROUGH את Y’shua, the TWO WORKING TOGETHER as ONE, created את the heavens ואת and the earth…implying TWO, not in the sense of separation but in the sense of distinction. The Vav/Aleph/Tav ואת Symbol is also erroneously translated as ‘and’, approximately 99% of the time. We must remember that originally in the primitive pictorial language of Paleo-Hebrew there were NO conjunctions, so that translation cannot be accurate. Consequently, there are no Hebrew letter Vav’s (ו) standing alone in text implying the word “and.”
Note: The correct pronunciation and English spelling translation of the Hebrew letter Vav (ו) has been argued over for hundreds of years. It is more than likely a Uau sound rather than Vav or Waw because the Hebrew letter shape retained its form “Y” being from the Upsilon (Greek letter U), but going into Latin, this shape “Y” lost the lower stem and became a “V” with the sound we know as “U”, as in the Latin word Gladivs. In the 13th Century, the “double-U” first appeared, retaining the shape of the Latin, VV (two V’s). During the medieval period the idea of our “V” (bilabial fricative) came from the Germanic/Ashkenazic corruption of the Hebrew letter, now widely thought of as “Vav.” The English Alphabet is derived from the Greek and clearly reveals the evolution of these three letters in their proper order as U, V, and W.
The Hebrew letter Vav is the sixth letter in the Hebrew Aleph-Bet having the numeric value of six. It is no coincidence that the first time the Hebrew letter Vav is used is in the sixth Hebrew word in Genesis 1:1. Its Babylonian-Hebrew shape is that of a ‘tent peg’ or ‘nail’ and means to hook or bridge and also refers to man. So important was the letter Vav to the scribes that in writing the Hebrew scrolls they began each column of text with the Vav in order to hook the living word to the parchment. There are 304,805 Hebrew letters in the entire Torah, and it is also no coincidence that the Hebrew letter Vav marks the center of the Torah in the word ‘belly’, which is given an oversized Vav in Leviticus 11:42.
Since the Hebrew letter Vav represents the number six, it has long been associated with man who was created on the sixth day, who has to work for six days, and there is appointed to man six millennia (6,000 years) to rule until the coming of Y’shua the Messiah and the 1000 Year Millennial Kingdom. What we find is the majority of the time the Vav/Aleph/Tav ואת Symbol will follow the placement of an Aleph/Tav את Symbol in scripture. Thus it becomes an extension whereby the two Aleph Tav symbols are connected together by the Hebrew letter Vav (ו) in both meaning and purpose, as in Genesis 1:16 And made Elohim את Two Great Lights; the Greater את Light to rule the day ואת the lesser light to rule the night ואת the stars.