Bible Class Question: How Do We Know What Mark the Angel Used?

One Example of a Paleo-Hebrew Taw

In Ezekiel 9:4, the prophet hears the Lord tell an angel to go through Jerusalem and seal those who rejected the abominations committed in the city. In other words, God wanted to seal believers with this mark. Ezekiel states that it was a "taw" mark, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which corresponds to our "T."

In modern Hebrew a taw does not look at all like the mark made in Ezekiel's day. Modern Hebrew characters date from the tenth century AD. In Ezekiel's day, inscriptional evidence shows us that a taw might appear in the shape of an "X," but especially in the shape of a cross in the sixth century BC. I have attached a link to a Hebrew characters chart that shows some of the history, based on inscriptions and manuscripts. The basis of modern Hebrew characters appears in column 15, where taw is the last letter. The cross character to note is in the second column, the bottom left corner, just above the "2."

Horace Hummel's Concordia Commentary: Ezekiel 1-20 gives more detail on pp. 275-279.