Lesson 8 | Vocab
“Not an Iota, Not a Dot”
Jesus is saying that the Old Testament is so perfect, that not one single prophecy will fail to be fulfilled! And that is why he came: to fulfill “the Law [and] the Prophets” (v. 17).
This teaches us two truths about reading the Old Testament:
1. We are reading something absolutely perfect in every detail.
Leon Morris writes, ”The iota was the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, but here it is usually understood to refer to the yodh, the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet.”¹ And yodh is not only tiny in size but sometimes in importance: its presence or absence might not even change the meaning of a word at all.
Morris also says that the dot “was probably a tiny projection on some letters (that helped distinguish similar letters).”² Remember the difficulty you had at the beginning of your studies telling some letters apart? For example, heh and cheth are very similar:
ח ה
So examining the details of the text of Scripture is important work! Learning how to distinguish the different conjugations and stems of verbs is worth it. Nothing in Scripture is unimportant.
2. We are learning about what Jesus came to do.
Jesus’ statement “forms a very emphatic assertion of the permanent validity of Scripture. None of it will pass away, Jesus says, until all has taken place. The divine purpose in Scripture will be fully worked out.”⁴ And how will everything in Scripture be worked out? By Jesus himself.
So when you are studying the Old Testament, you are getting a preview of the work of Jesus. We need more than the Gospels to know Christ: we need the Old Testament! Look for his glory to be revealed there as you study it in this course.