Signature

SIGNATURE, Heb. תָּו, H9338, usually considered a synthetic form from “tau,” the name of the last letter in the Heb. alphabet plus a personal possessive suffix. It means “my mark,” or “my initials.” It appears without the suffix in Ezekiel 9:4, 6 where it is commonly tr. as “mark” and was prob. a simple “X,” the form of the early round script Sem. tau. In Job 31:35, the only occurrence of the form with the suffix, it refers to a legal document, prob. a clay tablet on which the defendant or contractor would emboss his mark. Most Eng. VSS read SIGNATURE; however, KJV mistakenly reads DESIRE.