What Does Exodus 28:5 Mean?
And they will take gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And they shall take gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen.THE KEY
The scarlet in this sacred garment carries the name of a worm, so even its color remembers the living source from which it comes.
THE MEANING
Here, what is set apart takes a visible, tactile form: gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and linen are gathered into one garment. Their distinct materials and colors remain distinct even as they belong to a single whole.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This loosens the belief that what is sacred must be invisible or separate from matter; here it is made tangible.
THE ROOT
תּוֹלַעַת הַשָּׁנִי
tola'at ha-shani
GROWS FROM
תלע
t-l-ʿ
Worm; the word tola’at also names the scarlet dye associated with the worm.
The word translated “scarlet” includes tola’at, “worm.” A color in this garment therefore carries the name of a living source in its own word, joining the creature and the material in a way the English color name leaves unseen.
ALSO GROWS
tola'at: Worm or grub.
תּוֹלַעַת
This is the creature-word inside the phrase for scarlet, bringing a living source into the list of garment materials.
tola: Crimson or scarlet.
תּוֹלָע
The related form names the color itself, letting the worm-word and the red hue echo one another.
THE PATTERN
What is set apart takes visible form through distinct materials gathered into a whole.
And from the blue, the purple, and the scarlet, they made garments of service, to serve in the set-apart place, and they made the set-apart garments for Aaron, as the LORD commanded Moses.And the whole house he sheathed with gold, until he had finished all the house; also the whole altar that was by the innermost room he sheathed with gold.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
But I am a worm and not a man; the scorn of humankind, despised by the people.Psalm 22:6 uses the same worm-word, תּוֹלַעַת (tola’at), that appears within Exodus’s phrase for scarlet. A word that names a garment color here also names a person’s felt lowliness there, bringing the color’s living source into sharper view.
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