Meaning
Atbash folds the alphabet in half end to end. The first letter changes places with the last, alef with tav, the second with the second-last, bet with shin, and so on to the middle, where kaf and lamed exchange. The name is made of the first two pairs, alef-tav and bet-shin. On its own, Atbash is a substitution: a word becomes another string of letters. Our chart then takes the standard value of the new string, so what it reports is the gematria of the Atbash form.
The substitution is old. In Jeremiah 25:26 and 51:41 the name Sheshach appears where Babel is meant, and Atbash turns ששך into בבל; in 51:1 Leb-kamai turns into Kasdim, the Chaldeans. That is the traditional and the usual scholarly reading. Why the prophet wrote so is a question of interpretation; concealment and wordplay have both been proposed. The rabbis later counted Atbash among the permutations by which a word could be read.
How it is counted
שלום, shalom, "peace", becomes בכפי: ב 2 + כ 20 + פ 80 + י 10 = 112.
נחש, nachash, "serpent", becomes טסב: ט 9 + ס 60 + ב 2 = 71.
אמת, emet, "truth", becomes תיא: ת 400 + י 10 + א 1 = 411.
The Babel example
ששך, Sheshach, under Atbash becomes בבל, Babel: shin to bet, shin to bet, final kaf to lamed. Its Atbash value is therefore Babel's standard value, 34, while its own standard value is 620. The example shows the two steps the chart keeps apart: the swap, which is the cipher, and the sum, which is the gematria.
The Chaldeans in Jeremiah 51:1
The second biblical example works the same way. Leb-kamai, לב קמי, "the heart of those who rise against me", becomes כשדים, Kasdim, the Chaldeans: lamed to kaf, bet to shin, qof to dalet, mem to yod and yod to mem. Its standard value is 182; its Atbash value, Kasdim's standard value, is 374. As with Sheshach, the substitution is the scholarly reading of the verse; the sums are what our chart adds.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Jeremiah 25:26; 51:41
- Sheshach, ששך, which Atbash turns into Babel, בבל sourced
- Jeremiah 51:1
- Leb-kamai, which Atbash turns into Kasdim, the Chaldeans sourced
- Why Jeremiah used it
- A reading, not a fact: concealment and wordplay are both proposed disputed
- A substitution, then a sum
- The swap is a cipher; the gematria is the value taken afterwards our construction
How the schools read it
- The Hebrew Bible
- Uses the substitution for Babel and the Chaldeans, on the traditional and scholarly reading.
- The rabbis
- Count it among the permutations by which a word may be read.
- EsoTerrier
- Behind "more ciphers": the swap, then the standard value.
Claims about it
-
A letter substitution such as Atbash is itself gematria.
falseWhat the record shows: The swap replaces letters and adds nothing; gematria is the sum. The chart does both steps and shows them apart.
