The Torah is supposed to be one continuous text, never ending and cycling from last verse connected to the first, and so it is, which is why that’s the way we read the Torah every year on Shemini Atzeret
We know from Chazal that the 42-letter Name, that existed prior to the Torah, is integrated into the Torah’s first verse and so it’s interesting that the last chapter in the Torah, Devarim 33, has 12 verses and first chapter, Bereshit 1, has 31 verses, and together, if we count the last and first verse as conjoined, here are 42 verses between them.
Now, the final portion in the Torah has 41 verses and if we were to add the first verse of the Torah to that, we’d get 42 once again.
But if we add the 146 (the value of Olam, world) verses of Bereshit, the Torah’s first portion, to the 41 verses of V’Zot HaBerakha, the last portion, we get 187 verses, which conveniently corresponds to the 187 chapters in the entire Torah.
These are both extremely interesting verses and we could write books on each and many have, including The Genesis Prayer about the first verse and the 42 Letter Name of G-d, but for the moment I’d just like to note that the 12 words of the final verse have no special final (sofit) letters amongst them that would connect them to Malchut, the world of physicality, while the Torah’s first verse has 3 special final letters and 3 letter tavs, which as the alef-bet’s last letter also represents Malchut , making 6 of 7 words connected to malchut. This phenomenon would be the opposite to what we’d expect to find.
Nevertheless, the final letters of the first verse total 3301 and those of the last verse total 380 (the value of Mitzra’im (Egypt/darkness), together they total 3681 and if we add 19 (kolel) for the 19 letters and 1 (kolel) for the conjoined verse we have 3701, the total gematria value of the 42-Letter Name of G-d.
As for the word Mitzra’im (darkness), if we split off its initial mem, and combine it with the bet of Bereshit, we get the value of 340, that of Shem (name) and thus cryptically, Shem Mem-Bet (the 42-Letter Name).
According to Chazal, the final letters point to the future.
As for the first letters of the last verse, they sum to 203, which it just so happens is the value of the Torah’s very first 3 letters (B,R,E), spelling Barah, created.
And as for the first letters of the Torah’s first verse, they sum to 22, as in the 22 letters of the Alef-bet.
That there are 12 words in the last verse and 7 in the first corresponds to the 12 elemental Hebrew letters (or building blocks) and the 7 double Hebrew letters (or building blocks) as Abraham spelled out in the Sefer Yetzirah. These align together through 42 turns of the cosmic wheels to form the governing letters and planets of the months, but more about that in another entry.
Even the values of the Names Devarim and Bereshit when added together are significant in that respectively they are 816 (using gematria sofit) and 913 and equal 1729, as in the 1729 times the value 26 (that of the Tetragrammaton, YHVH) appears in the Torah. And while 1729 being 12 cubed plus 1 (kolel) is significant we won’t go into it here.
One final note for now, any oddity in the Torah composition is never an oddity, but a focal point for study and understanding and the last verse has 8 letter lameds (of value 30 each, and of small gematria value 3) in it, and five of them are final letters in the words, thus 5/8 of them are final letters. This may be significant because the total, (letter, words, and verses) in the Torah is exactly 5 raised to the power of 8, 390625, which is 625 squared, and 5/8 = .625 and 625 is the value of H’Keter, “the Crown” and the highest sefira (dimension). And 358 is the value of Mashiach, the Messiah.
