Page 93 - Attractive Deception - The False Hope of the Hebrew Roots Movement

hand and they shall be as frontlets on your forehead.

Exodus 13:16
So it shall serve as a sign on your hand, and as phylacteries on your forehead, for with a powerful
hand Yahweh brought us out of Egypt.

These words spoken by Yahweh were not intended to be observed literally. He was using symbolic
speech. There are four Scripture passages that speak of binding Yahweh’s commandments to one’s
hand and to one’s forehead. They are Exodus 13:9 and 13:16; Deuteronomy 6:8-9 and 11:18. Many
things spoken by Yahweh in the Torah were intended to be understood symbolically. In the same
book of Deuteronomy, in a passage found between the two verses that reference the Tefillin, we find
the following words of God.

Deuteronomy 10:16
Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart...

Unless Abraham’s descendants were to begin practicing open heart surgery, they would surely have
to understand this as figurative language. Undoubtedly, if there had been some practical way for the
Jews to circumcise their hearts, they would have attempted to do so. Such is the folly of man. It is
ridiculous for Jewish men to pay exorbitant prices for small, black leather boxes that contain small
scrolls with Scripture passages relating to tefillin written on them, and to strap them to their bodies
every morning during their prayers. Yahweh was not intending His people to take these passages
literally, but rather to understand the spiritual sense of what was being conveyed.

One sense in which these passages were to be understood is that the Hebrew people were to always
be mindful of Yahweh’s commandments. They were to act as if Yahweh’s commandments were
right before their eyes all the time. Whenever they stretched out their hand to do something, they
were to consider the will of God. A further signification of these words relates to the locations on
the human body that are named in these passages. The forehead and the hand represent the thoughts
and the actions of man. We see these same locations referenced in the book of Revelation.

Revelation 14:9
If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand,
he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His
anger...

I have explored the spiritual symbolism of these passages in the book titled The Mark of the Beast.
Most Christians have been as negligent to consider the spiritual meaning of these words in the book
of Revelation as the Orthodox Jews have been in their misunderstanding of the passages that speak