The Jehoiachin Code in Scripture’s Priestly Benediction 239 recognizes how the writer spaced the letters of the concealed words. A 1 indicates he or she drew a letter from six consecutive text words, while a 2 means the writer used every second word. The other columns give the starting and ending words for each spelling. Here are details about two of the table’s encodings. Item 1 shows a letter sequence of ˆyyywk and an interval of one. This coding begins at the first word of Num 6,24, the start of the Priestly Benediction, and ends at the third word of 6,25. The following shows those six text words with the letters of the Jehoiachin spelling in bold underline: wyn"p hwhy" ra'y ˚rmçyw hwhy ˚krby. Item 2 in " " ' the table offers another example. The coded word begins on the same text word, but has an interval of two. That is, the author draws a letter from every other text word, starting with the first. A six-letter coded word requires eleven text words. The appropriate letters of ˆykywy are shown in bold underline: wynp hwhy açy" ˚njyw ˚yla wynp hwhy" ray ˚rmçyw" hwhy ˚krby. These examples illustrate " " " how simply the biblical writer might have conveyed information — should this prove to be an authentic code. Readers are invited to verify the other spellings shown in the table. The benediction numbers fifteen text words, and it conceals fourteen spellings of Jehoiachin. This is just one short of what a passage of this length could accommodate. Based upon this, it seemed likely that the Priestly Benediction was intended to honor the exiled king of Judah. But the question remained of what other names might be coded in the benediction (18). To answer this, a list was assembled of every personal Hebrew name in scripture, including all spelling variations. To this were added names from rabbinic writings, drawn principally from Marcus Jastrow’s Dictionary (19). Archaeology also made its contribution with previously unknown Hebrew names discovered on signature seals (20). The final list of Hebrew personal names totaled 1,302, ninety-four percent of which are found in the Bible. The list of biblical names is exhaustive, though those from rabbinic writings and archaeology are not (and perhaps they cannot be). The Priestly Benediction contains but thirteen of the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This permits us to eliminate names that contain any of the absent letters, leaving 456 names that could have been spelled within the benediction (21). Many of scripture’s personal names have multiple spellings, and Jehoiachin with six variations has more than any. In addition, in 1928 William F. Albright discovered a jar handle with a possible seventh Jehoiachin variation, one that does not appear in the Bible (22). Six of the seven (18) I am indebted to H. Chernoff, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, who raised this question. (19) M. JASTROW, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Jerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York 1901; reprint 1985). (20) See, for example, N. AVIGAD, Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah (Jerusalem 1986). (21) Of the 456 personal Hebrew names, 427 come from the Bible, 27 from archaeological finds, and 2 from rabbinic sources. (22) W.F. ALBRIGHT, “The Seal of Eliakim and the Latest Preexilic History of Judah, with Some Observations on Ezekiel”, JBL (1932) 81; ID., “King Joiachin in Exile”, BA (1942) 50. Others challenge the identification of ˆkwy with Jehoiachin: A. MALAMAT, “The Twilight of Judah: in the Egyptian-Babylonian Maelstrom”, VTS 28 (1975) 138 n. 34; D. USSISHKIN, “Royal Judean Storage Jars and Private Seal Impressions”, BASOR 223 (1976) 11.