Precious Stones · The Symbolism of Scripture
Precious Stones
A gem in Scripture is never simply valuable. It is cut, engraved with a name, and set into something — and the passages that use the image state what it is for, over and over, while never once explaining a single stone.
What It Stands For
cut, named, and set into something
Three verbs follow these stones everywhere in Scripture, and none of them is owned. They are cut — worked by a specialist, the way a seal is engraved. They are named— a stone in the Bible almost always has somebody’s name on it. And they are set — into gold, into a breastplate, into a wall. A loose gem in a bag does not appear.
Engrave the names of the sons of Israel on the two stones the way a gem cutter engraves a seal. Then mount the stones in gold filigree settings.The instruction is about craftsmanship before it is about value: cut like a signet, and then mounted.
Four rows of stones - With a name on each stone, making in all the twelve names of the twelve tribes.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Exodus 28:17
And just so many are reckoned up in the preceding verses, each of which had one or other of the names of the children of Israel engraved on them, according to the order of their names in their birth.
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1763Particular Baptist
Exodus 28:21
Gill’s detail is worth pausing on. The names go on in the order the men were born — not by rank, not by the size of the tribe, not by who behaved well. The arrangement records a family, not a league table.
What the Chapter Says, and What It Refuses To
the purpose four times over, and not one gem explained
What the chapter states, and where
They are engraved, by a specialist, the way a signet is cut
“like the engravings of a signet”
Exodus 28:11Each one carries the name of a tribe
“every one with his name shall they be according to the twelve tribes”
Exodus 28:21Two are worn on the shoulders, and the reason is given
“Aaron shall bear their names before the LORD upon his two shoulders for a memorial”
Exodus 28:12Twelve are worn on the heart, and the reason is given again
“upon his heart… for a memorial before the LORD continually”
Exodus 28:29
What it never says, anywhere
- What a sardius means. Or a topaz, or a carbuncle, or any of the other nine.
- Which tribe goes on which stone. The chapter gives an order for the names and never pairs a name to a gem.
- Which mineral any Hebrew gem-name actually is. Nobody has recovered this, and the translations disagree.
- Any ranking among the twelve. Four rows of three, and no row is called better.
Fasten both stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod as memorial stones for the sons of Israel. Aaron is to bear their names on his two shoulders as a memorial before the LORD.On the shoulders, the part of a man that carries weight, and the verse says why.
Whenever Aaron enters the Holy Place, he shall bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breastpiece of judgment, as a continual reminder before the LORD.And on the heart. The same word, memorial, for a different place; both are about being remembered, not being seen.
The two placements are the whole doctrine of the garment. Shoulders carry; the heart holds. A priest walks into the holy place bearing a nation in both senses at once, and Exodus states the reason in each verse rather than leaving it to a preacher. Matthew Henry takes it where the New Testament takes it:
How near should Christ's name be to our hearts, since he is pleased to lay our names so near his! and what a comfort it is to us, in all our addresses to God, that the great high priest of our profession has the names of all his Israel upon his breast before the Lord for a memorial, presenting them to God as the people of his choice, who were to be made accepted in the beloved!
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Exodus 28:29
Nobody Knows Which Stones These Are
and the commentators who admit it are the useful ones
And mount on it a setting of gemstones, four rows of stones: In the first row there shall be a ruby, a topaz, and an emerald;Three gem names in one verse, and every translation of them into a modern mineral is a best guess.
This is not a small doubt at the edges. Ancient gem vocabulary sorted stones mainly by colour and hardness, not by the chemistry that names them now, so an ancient name and a modern name can travel in opposite directions. Albert Barnes catches one doing exactly that:
It is derived from χρυσὸς chrusos, gold, and λίθος lithos, stone, and means golden stone, and was applied by the ancients to all gems of a golden or yellow color, probably designating particularly the topaz of the moderns (Robinson, Lexicon). But in Websters Dictionary it is said that its prevalent color is green. It is sometimes transparent. This is the modern chrysolite. The ancients undoubtedly understood by the name a yellow gem.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Revelation 21:20
Yellow then, green now, same word. Bede has the same trouble with jasper, and reports it plainly:
There are many kinds of jasper. One is green in color and appears sprinkled with flowers. Another resembles an emerald but is of a thicker color, which is said to drive away all illusions.
Bede the Venerable· Commentary on Revelation, 735Anglo-Saxon, eighth century
Revelation 21:19
Three more places the identification comes apart, and one honest 'I do not know'what the translations do when they cannot agree
Isaiah’s windows. John Gill notes that the stone English calls agate is not clear enough to make a window of, and that the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac and Arabic all render it jasper instead:
Some sort of which stones, Pliny (x) says, were valued for their clearness like glass; but the stone which bears this name with us is not clear and lucid enough to make windows of. The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Arabic versions, render it, "of jasper", a stone more fit for that purpose
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament, 1763Particular Baptist
Isaiah 54:12
And it is not only the gems. Barnes finds the architecture disputed in the same verse. Jerome and the Septuagint do not even agree that the word means windows:
And I will make thy windows - The word rendered here windows is rendered by Jerome propugnacula - fortresses, bulwarks, ramparts; and by the Septuagint, Επαλξεις Epalcheis - Bulwarks, or rather, pinnacles on the walls.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Isaiah 54:12
Job’s coral. Barnes again, on a word the margin keeps in Hebrew because nobody is sure:
That is, as a price by which to purchase wisdom, or in comparison with wisdom. The margin here is, Ramoth - retaining the Hebrew word ראמה râ'mâh. Jerome renders it, excelsa - exalted or valuable things.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Job 28:18
The model answer is Adam Clarke, four verses on from the stone list, on the Urim and Thummim: an admission of ignorance set out as an argument rather than mumbled:
Thou shalt put in the breastplate - the Urim and the Thummim - What these were has, I believe, never yet been discovered. 1. They are nowhere described. 2. There is no direction given to Moses or any other how to make them. 3. Whatever they were, they do not appear to have been made on this occasion.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Exodus 28:30
The practical consequence is worth stating plainly. A teaching that assigns a spiritual meaning to each of the twelve stones is building on two things the Bible does not supply — the meaning, and the identification of the mineral. That does not make such teaching wicked; much of it is devout and old. It makes it a reading, and a reading should say so.
There is even honest uncertainty about the names. Matthew Henry raises the question of Levi and settles it two ways without pretending to know: “Some question whether Levi had a precious stone with his name or no. If not, Ephraim and Manasseh were reckoned distinct, as Jacob had said they should be, and the high priest himself, being head of the tribe of Levi, sufficiently represented that tribe.”
The Jewels Verse Is Not About Jewels
one Hebrew word, and a translation that stuck
“They will be Mine,” says the LORD of Hosts, “on the day when I prepare My treasured possession. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.Read it without the King James word 'jewels' in your ear, and notice what the second half of the verse compares them to.
When I make up my jewels - סגלה segullah, my peculium, my proper treasure; that which is a mans own, and most prized by him. Not jewels; for in no part of the Bible does the word mean a gem or precious stone of any kind. The interpretations frequently given of the word in this verse, comparing saints to jewels, are forced and false.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Malachi 3:17
Clarke is blunt because the point is simple: segullah (H5459) is a property word — the personal treasure a man keeps rather than spends, wealth shut up close. It is the word God uses of Israel at Sinai, long before there is a breastplate:
Now if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations—for the whole earth is Mine.'A peculiar treasure': the same Hebrew word, said to the same people, at the mountain.
And Malachi’s own next clause settles the register: as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. That is not a jeweller looking at his collection. Jerome, translating in the fifth century, had already gone the other way from “jewels”:
on the day that I make them My special possession. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.
Jerome· Commentary on Malachi, 420Latin, fifth century
Malachi 3:17
None of which empties the verse. It changes what it is full of. The promise is not that God will find you decorative. It is that He will not spend you.
Where Scripture does put people and gemstones in one sentence, it does it in the same register: set high and kept, rather than admired:
On that day the LORD their God will save themas the flock of His people;for like jewels in a crownthey will sparkle over His land.Stones of a crown, and the verb is 'lifted up': the picture is of something raised where it will be seen, not something worn for effect.
While Gods enemies shall be trampled under foot, as a common thing which has failed its end, these shall be precious stones; a consecrated diadem of king or priest, raised aloft, so that all can see.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Zechariah 9:16
A City Built Out of Them
Isaiah's promise, and the warning that comes with it
“O afflicted city, lashed by storms, without solace, surely I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones.Said to a people whose actual city had been pulled down: foundations, windows, gates and boundary walls, all of gemstone.
Adam Clarke, who elsewhere on this page is the man counting the stones and naming the Hebrew, is also the one who puts the brakes on. His note here is the single most useful sentence in the commentary on this symbol:
These seem to be general images to express beauty, magnificence, purity, strength, and solidity, agreeably to the ideas of the eastern nations; and to have never been intended to be strictly scrutinized, or minutely and particularly explained, as if they had each of them some precise, moral, or spiritual meaning.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Isaiah 54:11
“Never intended to be strictly scrutinized.” The passage is doing what a promise does: piling up worth and permanence for people who had just watched everything they built come down. Reading a separate doctrine out of the agate is reading against the grain of the sentence.
Where It Points
the last wall in the Bible, and whose names are on it
“names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel”
Revelation 21:12“in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb”
Revelation 21:14The wall of the city had twelve foundations bearing the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.Twelve foundations, twelve apostles, set two verses after twelve gates carrying the names of the twelve tribes.
The foundations of the city walls were adorned with every kind of precious stone: The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.And the foundations are named one by one. Read it as a list of stones and the structural claim is easy to miss.
Each precious stone was not the ornament of the foundation, but the foundation itself.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Methodist
Revelation 21:19
Wesley has caught the thing the eye slides past. In Exodus the stones are worn; here they are load-bearing. Nothing in the city is decorated with gems. The gems are what the wall stands on. Twelve stones that began on a man’s chest end up holding a city up.
The gates represented the twelve tribes, Rev 21:12; and these foundations or thresholds, the twelve apostles, Rev 21:14. There was no entrance into the city but through those gates, and none through the gates but over these thresholds.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Revelation 21:19
Notice how Clarke reads the arrangement: not one twelve cancelling the other, but a way in that runs over both. The chapter is sometimes quoted as though the apostles had taken the place of the tribes. It puts both sets of names on the same wall, four verses apart, and never suggests a substitution. That question is worked out in full elsewhere on the site; here it is simply what the wall says.
the promise and power of God, and the purchase of Christ, are the strong foundations of the church's safety and happiness.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Revelation 21:19
What Scripture says outright
- Exodus 28:12
The purpose of the shoulder stones is given in the verse itself: Aaron bears the names before the LORD for a memorial.
- Exodus 28:29
And the purpose of the breastplate stones, in the same words, for a different place: upon his heart, before the LORD, continually.
- Revelation 21:12
The gates carry the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. Stated, and stated before the apostles are mentioned.
- Revelation 21:14
The foundations carry the names of the twelve apostles. Both twelves are named; the text draws no line between them.
What readers have heard in it
Readings of long standing, named as readings.
- Revelation 21:19
That each foundation stone stands for a particular apostle. Andreas of Caesarea works through all twelve — “It is likely that through the jasper, which has the color green like the emerald, the chief apostle Peter is indicated.” — and Revelation itself pairs no name with any stone.
- Exodus 28:17
That each of the twelve tribal stones carries a fixed spiritual meaning, or that the colours encode a doctrine. Exodus names the stones and the tribes and never joins them.
- Job 28:18
That Job’s gem list is a hidden reference to the breastplate. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read it that way — “The Urim and Thummim, the means of consulting God by the twelve stones on the high priest's breastplate, "the stones of the sanctuary" (La 4:1), have their counterpart in this chapter; the precious stones symbolizing the "light" and "perfection" of the divine wisdom.” — and the chapter itself is arguing about the price of wisdom.
- Malachi 3:17
That the saints are God’s jewels. A much-loved reading resting on a translation choice; the Hebrew word is about treasured property, and the verse’s own comparison is a father with a son.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the stones in the order the Bible sets them
Engrave the names of the sons of Israel on the two stones the way a gem cutter engraves a seal. Then mount the stones in gold filigree settings.
The first thing said about the stones is not that they are valuable. It is how they are to be worked: by an engraver, the way a man's seal is cut.
Fasten both stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod as memorial stones for the sons of Israel. Aaron is to bear their names on his two shoulders as a memorial before the LORD.
Two onyx stones on the shoulders, where a load is carried, and the verse gives the reason before anyone can invent one.
The twelve stones are to correspond to the names of the sons of Israel, each engraved like a seal with the name of one of the twelve tribes.
Twelve stones, twelve names, one apiece. The chapter is careful about the count and silent about the pairing.
Whenever Aaron enters the Holy Place, he shall bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breastpiece of judgment, as a continual reminder before the LORD.
And the same reason given a second time, for a different place on the body: on the heart, continually.
Neither gold nor crystal can compare to it, nor jewels of fine gold be exchanged for it.
The oldest use of gems in Scripture is a price list: every stone the ancient world knew, laid beside wisdom, and none of them enough.
“O afflicted city, lashed by storms, without solace, surely I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones.
A city rebuilt out of gemstones, promised to a people who had lost one. The prophet is describing worth and permanence, not writing a specification.
“They will be Mine,” says the LORD of Hosts, “on the day when I prepare My treasured possession. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.
The most quoted 'jewels' verse in the Bible, and the Hebrew word behind it is not a jewel word at all.
On that day the LORD their God will save themas the flock of His people;for like jewels in a crownthey will sparkle over His land.
Stones of a crown, lifted up where they can be seen. The image is of something set high on purpose.
The wall of the city had twelve foundations bearing the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
Twelve foundations with twelve names, two verses after twelve gates with twelve other names.
The foundations of the city walls were adorned with every kind of precious stone: The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.
The last list of stones in the Bible, and they are not decoration on the foundations. They are the foundations.
The Voices
with the work named
Adam Clarke is this page twice over, and in opposite directions. He is the one who does the Hebrew work on segullah and says the jewels reading is forced; and he is the one who, faced with a whole city of gemstones in Isaiah, says the images were never meant to be scrutinised stone by stone. Both are the same instinct: find out what the word does, and stop where the text stops.
Albert Barnes is the mineralogist of the group and the most useful witness to the identification problem; he is the one who catches chrysolite changing colour between the ancient world and the modern. Bede admits the same about jasper a thousand years earlier. John Wesley supplies both the compact colour key and the structural sentence that reframes the whole of Revelation 21:19. Matthew Henry takes the breastplate where the letter to the Hebrews takes it, and John Gill notices that the names go on in birth order.
Where to Go Next
Where the stones are worn
Where the stones hold something up
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: