Blue, Purple & Scarlet · The Symbolism of Scripture
Blue, Purple & Scarlet
Three dyed threads, named together in twenty-six verses of Exodus and nowhere else, always in the same order, and never once explained, beside the one colour Scripture does explain, and the reason it gives for it.
What They Stand For
the honest answer, and what the text gives instead
The honest answer to “what do the three colours mean?” is that Exodus does not say. It says what they are made of, what they cost in effort, and exactly where each thread goes, which is a great deal of information, and not the information most teaching on this subject offers.
Start with what they are. MannaFest’s own word floor carries the lexicon definitions, and two of the three name a creature: tekeleth (H8504) is defined as the cerulean mussel and the colour got from it; shani (H8144) as crimson, properly, the insect or its color. The blue came out of the sea and the scarlet off a shrub, and both had to be caught, crushed and processed in quantity to dye a curtain. Argaman (H713), the purple, the lexicon defines only as the colour or the dyed stuff, an honest gap, left as one here.
That is the first real fact about the three: they are the expensive ones. A people three months out of slavery are asked for the costliest textiles on earth, and give them.
blue, purple, and scarlet yarn; fine linen and goat hair;The first appearance of the formula, in a list of what may be brought as an offering.
Twenty-Six Times, and Never Once Explained
counted rather than remembered
Twenty-six verses. One book. Zero departures from the order — every single one reads blue, then purple, then scarlet.
And in none of the twenty-six is a colour explained.
A phrase repeated twenty-six times without variation is a specification, not a symbol being developed. Exodus is doing what a builder’s document does: naming the materials, in a fixed order, every time the material is called for. Where a biblical writer wants a colour to carry a meaning he says so, which is exactly what happens once, in another book, and it is worth seeing what that looks like by contrast.
The ten curtains of the tabernacle itself
Exodus 26:1The veil before the holiest place
Exodus 26:31The screen at the door of the tent
Exodus 26:36The gate of the outer courtyard
Exodus 27:16The high priest's ephod
Exodus 28:6The breastplate of judgment
Exodus 28:15Pomegranates round the hem of his robe
Exodus 28:33
A hanging for the door of the tent - This may be called the first veil, as it occupied the door or entrance to the tabernacle; the veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies is called the second veil, Heb 9:3. These two veils and the inner covering of the tabernacle were all of the same materials, and of the same workmanship.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Exodus 26:36
Clarke’s observation is easy to read past and hard to un-see: the door screen, the inner veil and the tent’s own covering are the same materials and the same workmanship. Whatever the colours are for, they are not a scale of access. And on the veil itself he notices what the Hebrew name is built from:
Thou shalt make a veil - פרכת parocheth, from פרך parach, to break or rend; the inner veil of the tabernacle or temple, (2Ch 3:14), which broke, interrupted, or divided between the holy place and the most holy
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Exodus 26:31
The One Colour Scripture Explains
a blue thread, and a reason given out loud
“Speak to the Israelites and tell them that throughout the generations to come they are to make for themselves tassels for the corners of their garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the commandments of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.Verse 38 gives the instruction; verse 39 gives the purpose, in plain words, with no interpretation required.
This is the contrast the whole page turns on. Twenty-six times the three colours are specified and never explained; here one of them is taken out of the tabernacle, put on the corner of an ordinary man’s cloak, and given a stated function in the next verse: that ye may look upon it, and remember. The blue thread is not a code to be broken. It is a reminder, and Scripture says so.
The ordinary outer Jewish garment was a quadrangular piece of cloth like a modern plaid, to the corners of which, in conformity with this command, a tassel was attached.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Numbers 15:38
An ordinary four-cornered outer garment, a tassel at each corner, one conspicuous blue thread in each tassel, worn by farmers and fishermen, not by priests. And Adam Clarke, who is usually the first to find a meaning, is careful here in a way worth copying:
We learn from Num 15:39 that these fringes were emblematical of the various commands of God. That there was any analogy between a fringe and a precept, it would be bold to assert; but when a thing is appointed to represent another, no matter how different, that first object be comes the regular representative or sign of the other.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Numbers 15:39
The thread does not resemble a commandment. It was appointed to stand for one. That single distinction — between a sign that works by likeness and a sign that works by appointment — is the thing most colour teaching gets wrong, and Clarke states it on the one verse where Scripture itself supplies the meaning.
Which is repeated, that the end and use of these fringes might be particularly taken notice of, and attended to; that so they might not satisfy themselves with and rest in this ceremony of wearing the fringes, but be found in the observance of every moral precept
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1763Particular Baptist
Numbers 15:40
You are to make the robe of the ephod entirely of blue cloth,And the one garment that is not the three-colour weave at all. The robe under the ephod is blue, and nothing else.
The all-blue robe, and the detail two commentators notice about how it was madeone piece, with a bound opening
From this description, and from what Josephus says, who must have been well acquainted with its form, we find that this meil, or robe, was one long straight piece of blue cloth, with a hole or opening in the center for the head to pass through; which hole or opening was bound about, that it might not be rent in putting it on or taking it off, Exo 28:32.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Exodus 28:31
the robe of the ephod all of blue--It was the middle garment, under the ephod and above the coat. It had a hole through which the head was thrust, and was formed carefully of one piece, such as was the robe of Christ (Joh 19:23).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Exodus 28:31
Both are describing the same construction: one length of cloth, a hole for the head, the opening bound so it cannot tear. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown draw the line forward to the seamless robe the soldiers would not divide (John 19:23). That comparison is theirs rather than the text’s, and it is a real observation about two garments made the same way.
Scarlet, and a Promise About Dye
the colour chosen because it does not come out
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will become like wool.Two colour words in one verse: scarlet, and crimson, and both are offered the same reversal.
שני shani, scarlet or crimson, dibaphum, twice dipped, or double dyed; from שנה shanah, iterare, to double, or to do a thing twice.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Isaiah 1:18
The word used here - שׁנים shānı̂ym - denotes properly a bright red color, much prized by the ancients. The Arabic verb means to shine, and the name was given to this color, it is supposed by some, on account of its splendor, or bright appearance.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Isaiah 1:18
Dibaphum — twice dipped. Clarke reads the Hebrew word as built on the verb to do a thing twice, and the process is in the name: cloth run through the dye bath and run through it again, to get a red that would hold. Which makes Isaiah’s image an argument rather than a decoration. The prophet has picked the one colour whose whole value was that it stayed.
Worth marking honestly: no commentator in this page’s source pool states outright that the dye was chemically impossible to wash out.What is sourced is the name (twice dipped), the source (an insect), the price (much prized), and the direction of the promise. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the second half as a return rather than a bleaching — “as wool--restored to its original undyed whiteness.” — which is the wool going back to what it was before anyone dyed it.
Say to the children of my people, Though your sins reach from earth to heaven, and though they be redder than scarlet, and blacker than sack-cloth, yet if you turn to me with your whole heart, and say, Father! I will listen to you, as to a holy people.
Clement of Rome· Clement's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 8, 99Rome, first century
Isaiah 1:18
Clement is quoting the verse before the end of the first century, in a letter to a church in trouble, and stacking it with the repentance texts either side of it. Whatever else the colour is doing, this is what the earliest readers used it for.
Scarlet as Ordinary Equipment
a cord in a window, and a thread round a bunch of hyssop
unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother and brothers and all your family into your house.The spies name the signal and its purpose: bind this in the window, and gather your household inside.
“Let it be as you say,” she replied, and she sent them away. And when they had gone, she tied the scarlet cord in the window.And she does it immediately: before the army is anywhere near the city.
The line or cord was spun of threads dyed with cochineal: i. e., of a deep and bright scarlet color. The color would catch the eye at once, and supplied an obvious token by which the house of Rahab might be distinguished.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Joshua 2:18
Barnes gives the plain function first, and it is the function the chapter gives: the colour would catch the eye. A besieging army needed to identify one window in a wall. That is what the text says the cord is for.
Barnes describes the dye as cochineal, which is the modern name for a New World insect dye and not what a Canaanite dyer had. The scale insect behind the Hebrew word is the same family and the wrong hemisphere; the observation about the colour stands, the label is his century’s.
The connection everyone makes. Rahab’s cord and the blood on the doorposts, is old and is worth having in the two forms it comes in. Matthew Henry offers it as something others say:
This was like the blood sprinkled upon the door-post, which secured the first-born from the destroying angel, and, being of the same colour, some allude to this also to represent the safety of believers under the protection of the blood of Christ sprinkled on the conscience.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Joshua 2:18
She herself puts the scarlet-colored sign in her house, through which she is bound to be saved from the destruction of the city. No other sign would have been accepted, except the scarlet-colored one that carried the sign of blood.
Origen of Alexandria· Homilies on Joshua 3.5, 253Alexandrian, third century
Joshua 2:21
The difference between those two is the difference this page is about. Henry says some allude to this; Origen says no other sign would have been accepted. Joshua 2 records an agreed signal and never comments on its colour, so Henry has the register right, the connection is worth making, and it is the reader’s to make, not the chapter’s claim.
For when Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, along with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people,Scarlet wool listed among the tools of the covenant ceremony, between the water and the hyssop.
The rite was performed thus: Having received the blood of the calves and goats into basins, and mingled it with water to prevent it from coagulating, he then took a bunch of hyssop, and having bound it together with thread made of scarlet wool, he dipped this in the basin, and sprinkled the blood and water upon the people who were nearest to him
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hebrews 9:19
Which is a useful corrective all by itself. Here the scarlet is not carrying a meaning at all — it is the string that holds the brush together.
Where It Points
a purple robe, thrown on as a joke
They dressed Him in a purple robe, twisted together a crown of thorns, and set it on His head.Mark says purple. Matthew, describing the same hour, says scarlet.
When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”And John keeps the robe on Him when Pilate brings Him out and says, Behold the man.
But we must understand that the words of Matthew, they put on him a scarlet robe, Mark expresses by clothed him in purple; for that scarlet robe was used by them in derision for the royal purple, and there is a sort of red purple, very like scarlet. It may also be that Mark mentions some purple which the robe had about it, though it was of a scarlet colour.
Augustine of Hippo· Catena Aurea (Aquinas), on Mark 15:17, 430Latin, fifth century
Mark 15:17
Augustine does not smooth the difference over; he sets out two ways it could stand. Either the soldiers used a cheap scarlet military cloak as royal purple, which is exactly the kind of joke a barrack room makes, or the garment had purple on it and was mostly red. Bede, three centuries later, went further and said the two words name one colour. That is a claim about ancient dye vocabulary and the page does not adopt it, the word floor derives the blue-purple family and the scarlet family from different creatures.
When they "clothed him in purple," it was in mockery, yet ironically it was a fulfillment of prophecy, for he indeed was a king, so even their parody indirectly served divine revelation. Even though they did it in a spirit of derision, still they did it, and his regal dignity was by that symbolically heralded. So, likewise, though it was with thorns they crowned him, it was still a crown.
Cyril of Jerusalem· Sermon on the Paralytic 12, 386Jerusalem, fourth century
Mark 15:17
“Still, they did it.” Cyril’s reading is the page’s last turn, and it needs no allegory to work. The most expensive colour in the ancient world is put on Him by men who meant it as a joke, and the joke is accurate. The colour that ran through every curtain of the tent where God met Israel ends up on the shoulders of a condemned man being mocked as a king — and Pilate, without knowing what he is doing, brings Him out wearing it and tells the crowd to look.
What Scripture says outright
- Numbers 15:39
The purpose of the blue thread, given in the verse: look upon it and remember the commandments. The only colour in Scripture with a stated meaning.
- Joshua 2:18
The scarlet cord’s purpose is stated as a signal for identifying one house. Its colour is never commented on.
- Isaiah 1:18
Scarlet and crimson are used as figures for sin and both are promised a reversal, said outright, and the only place a colour is given a moral value in a sentence.
- Exodus 26:31
The materials of the veil are specified exactly, and the same specification is given for the courtyard gate. The text itself makes them equal.
What readers have heard in it
Readings of long standing, named as readings.
- Exodus 26:1
That blue means heaven, purple means royalty and scarlet means blood or sacrifice. A teaching with centuries behind it; Exodus names the three colours twenty-six times without ever saying it.
- Numbers 15:38
That the blue of the fringe means heaven. Albert Barnes: “Each tassel had a conspicuous thread of deep blue, this color being doubtless symbolic of the heavenly origin of the commandments of which it was to serve as a memento.” The verse gives its own reason one line later, and it is memory, not heaven.
- Joshua 2:21
That the scarlet cord had to be scarlet because scarlet means blood. Origen says no other sign would have been accepted; the chapter says the spies chose a signal she could tie in a window.
- Mark 15:17
That scarlet and purple are simply the same colour, which would dissolve the difference between Matthew and Mark. Bede says it — “and a purple robe to represent the purple robe which kings wear. Matthew says, a scarlet robe, (Mat. 27:28) but scarleta and purple are different names for the same colour.” — and the two dyes came from different creatures.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the three threads in the order the Bible uses them
blue, purple, and scarlet yarn; fine linen and goat hair;
The first appearance is a shopping list. Before there is a tabernacle there is an offering, and three dyed threads are on it in the order they will keep for the rest of the book.
“You are to construct the tabernacle itself with ten curtains of finely spun linen, each with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and cherubim skillfully worked into them.
The tabernacle itself, not an ornament on it, the ten curtains that are it.
Make a veil of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and finely spun linen, with cherubim skillfully worked into it.
The veil, in the same three colours as the outer gate. The most restricted object in Israel is woven from the same cloth as the front door.
They shall use gold, along with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and fine linen.
And then onto a man. The priest's garments are made of the building's own material, with gold added.
You are to make the robe of the ephod entirely of blue cloth,
The one garment that breaks the formula: the robe of the ephod is all of blue, and only blue.
“Speak to the Israelites and tell them that throughout the generations to come they are to make for themselves tassels for the corners of their garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the commandments of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.
The one colour Scripture explains. A blue thread on the corner of every ordinary man's cloak, and verse 39 gives the reason out loud.
unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother and brothers and all your family into your house.
A scarlet cord in a window, agreed as a signal. The chapter says what it is for and says nothing about what it means.
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will become like wool.
Scarlet used for the one thing the colour is worst at: coming out. The dye behind the word is a double-dipped, insect-derived red.
For when Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, along with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people,
Scarlet wool turning up as ordinary equipment: the thread that ties the hyssop into a bunch a man can dip.
The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns, set it on His head, and dressed Him in a purple robe.
And the last time a purple garment is put on anyone in Scripture, a cohort does it as a joke about kingship.
The Voices
with the work named
Adam Clarke earns three separate places here and each is a different kind of work: the Hebrew behind scarlet and its twice-dipped process; the observation that the door screen, the veil and the tent covering are one and the same weave; and, the best of them, the distinction between a sign that works by resemblance and a sign that works because God appointed it. That last one is the discipline this whole symbol needs.
Albert Barnes reconstructs the ordinary garment the blue thread was worn on, and is honest enough elsewhere to be quoted against himself. Augustine sets out two ways to hold Matthew and Mark together without forcing either. Clement of Rome shows what the first generation of readers did with Isaiah 1:18. Matthew Henry demonstrates the right register for a reading, some allude to this — and Cyril of Jerusalem supplies the sentence the page ends on: they meant it as mockery, and it was still a crown.
Where to Go Next
Where the threads are woven in
Where the colour is on a person
Where the picture goes on
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: