Every Hebrew month has a Tribe, Constellation and Hebrew letter associated with it. These hold keys to our promises for that month and help us to pray in line with God’s timing and to get our lives into time with His specific appointed times.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 tells us ‘to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven’. Ecclesiastes 3:15 reads, ‘That which is has already been, and what is to be has already been; and God requires an account of what is past.’ From these verses we get an understanding of cycles and how history repeats itself. Just as our ‘seasons’ repeat themselves naturally (ie, Gulf experiencing hurricane season), things spiritually repeat themselves and we can learn from history. Not superstitiously, but seeking God in specific times.
Tevet is known as the ‘tenth month” according to the sacred calendar and is the ‘fourth month’on the civil calendar. This month one of the four fast-days which commemorate the destruction of the Temple of 587 BC is held on the 10th day of Tevet. Zechariah 8:19, “”Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘The fast of the fourth [month], The fast of the fifth, The fast of the seventh, And the fast of the tenth, ..”
The month begins with the ending of Hanukkah, also called the Festival of Lights or the Festival of Dedication. The eight-day celebration commemorates the miracle of one day’s supply of holy Temple oil lasting eight days until more pure Temple oil could be prepared. This year Hanukkah began at sundown December 8 and ends at sundown December 15. This is the only Festival that covers 2 months. It always begins on Cheshvan 25 and ends of Tevet 3 on the Hebrew Calendar.
The first mention of this month is found in Esther 2:16, “So Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, into his royal palace, in the tenth month, which is the month of Tevet in the seventh year of his reign.”
TRIBE- Dan, “Genesis 30:6, And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan.” He is the 5th son of Jacob and his name means ‘judge, discern, divine judgment’. Dan was gifted (graced) to ‘judge righteously’. His symbol is of a scale with a serpent wrapped around it. This is showing that the satanic influences will dominate if they did not turn to the Lord for help. The serpent is very beguiling and you will need divine discernment to judge every circumstance this month. Samson was from the lineage of Dan and one of the first workers to be filled with the Spirit to build the Tabernacle was from the Tribe of Dan. But in order to be mightily used of God, we need to judge ourselves and overcome our carnal nature. Remember, Dan was almost wiped out entirely out of the Bible but shows up in the millennium as first mentioned.
CONSTELLATION/MAZAL- Capricorn, ‘The Sea Goat’. It appears to be dying with its head bowed down, the right leg folded under the body and seems unable to rise with the left. The other part of the body is as a fish, full of life. The fish has always been a symbol of Christians. This represents the death of Jesus (scapegoat) so we could live. In the goat we have an atoning sacrifice, in the fish we have the people for whom the atonement was made. The entire part of this heavenly Bible story is telling of our benefits because of the death of Jesus Christ.
LETTER- Ayin, the 16th letter in the Hebrew Aleph-Bet with the numerical value of 70. The ancient pictograph is an eye and means ‘eye, look, appearance, see, understand’. The letter Ayin combined with the Tribe of Dan show us that we are going to need divine understanding and discernment in this month of Tevet.
SPECIAL DATES IN TEVET:
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1- In 355 BC, Esther becomes Queen (Esther 2:16)
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2- On this date in 1947, the Arab Legion surrounded Jerusalem and isolated its 100,000 Jews from the rest of the Israeli population. By March 1948 the city was under full siege, and in May, Jordan invaded and occupied east Jerusalem, dividing the city for the first time in its history, and driving thousands of Jews into exile. The Arabs proceeded to destroy all 58 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter, and used Jewish gravestones on the Mount of Olives to build roads and latrines. The Western Wall would be off-limits to Jews (in spite of the cease-fire agreement granting freedom of access to holy places), restored again with Israel’s victory in the 1967 war.
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5- In 422 BC, the prophet Ezekiel heard the news of Jerusalem’s conquest by a foreign power, as recorded in the biblical Book of Ezekiel (33:21).
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6- In 1949, six British RAF warplanes enforcing a UN ceasefire were shot down by Israeli forces over the Israel-Egypt border.
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8- This date marks the completion of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible in the third century BC — the oldest Bible translation. The Septuagint derives its name from the Latin word for ‘ seventy,’ alluding to the 72 Jewish scholars drafted by Egyptian King Ptolemy to translate the Bible for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria.
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9- Believed to be the death of Ezra. Ezra was the founder of the Great Assembly, a body of 120 prophets and sages who established important matters like the standard text found in Jewish prayer books today.
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10- In 424 BC, Babylonia King Nebuchadnezzar began his siege of Jerusalem. There was little damage on that first day and no Jews were killed, yet it began a chain of disasters which ended with the destruction of the Holy Temple. The 10th of Tevet is still observed today by Jews as a public fast day, as mentioned by the prophet Zechariah (8:19).
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11- In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln pledged to amend a federal law granting only Christian clergy the right to serve as military chaplains. It is regarded historically as the first case of American Jews successfully challenging federal legislation.
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11- In 1688, Jews were expelled from Austria
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16- In 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant was instructed to revoke Order No. 11, which had called for the expulsion of all Jews from Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. Grant wrote: “No Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point… The [region] must be purged of them.” Based on Grant’s orders, Jews were expelled from their homes, including 20 families from the town of Paducah alone. Jewish community leaders immediately arranged a meeting at the White House with President Lincoln, who cancelled the expulsion order. Grant, who would later become U.S. president, never offered any explanation or apology.
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19- In 1901, the Jewish National Fund was founded for the purpose of purchasing settlement land in Israel.
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20- In 1496, the Talmud was first printed
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22- In 1798, mobs attempted to torch the Jewish ghetto of Rome, but rains put out the fire. The day was then designated as a holiday by Roman Jews. The Roman Ghetto had been in existence since 1555, when the Pope segregated the Jews in a walled quarter with three gates that were locked at night.
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24- In 1837, Galilee Earthquake in northern Israel killed 4,000 Jews in Safed and between 700-1000 in Tiberius
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26- In 1826, Maryland adopted a law which allowed Jews to hold public office, on condition that they accept the concept of reward and punishment in the afterlife.
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28- In 81 BC Sadducees were ejected from the Sanhedrin
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29- In 1808, Ezekiel Hart, the first Jew elected to Canadian Parliament, was denied his seat when he swore the oath of inauguration on a Jewish Bible
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