The Shadow · The Symbolism of Scripture
The Shadow
Shelter from a sun that kills, and the outline a solid thing throws ahead of itself — two jobs that look opposite and run on exactly the same physics. A shadow always means something solid is standing in the light.
What It Stands For
two jobs, and the reason one word can do both
The Hebrew is tsel (H6738) — shade, literal or figurative — and the Greek is skia (G4639). Neither lexicon splits the word into two entries, and the reason is worth having plainly before any verse is read.
A shadow is what happens when something solid stands in a light. Take away the light and there is no shadow. Take away the solid thing and there is no shadow. So a shadow is always a report about two things that exist. Whether it shelters you or announces something coming depends only on where you are standing.
Which means the symbol has one thing it can never mean. It cannot mean unreal. G. K. Chesterton, writing about the older Scriptures, put it in a sentence: “We may truly call these foreshadowings; so long as we remember that foreshadowings are shadows.” (The Everlasting Man, 1925) — and a shadow is the wrong shape for a counterfeit.
Two Jobs, One Physics
the passages that look opposite, and the band they both stand on
A shadow you get under
where the body between you and the light is what saves you
“under the shadow of the Almighty”
Psalm 91:1“hide me under the shadow of thy wings”
Psalm 17:8“the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand”
Psalm 121:5“a shadow from the heat”
Isaiah 25:4“it might be a shadow over his head”
Jonah 4:6
A shadow thrown ahead
where the body that casts it has not arrived yet
“a shadow of things to come”
Colossians 2:17“the example and shadow of heavenly things”
Hebrews 8:5“a shadow of good things to come”
Hebrews 10:1
What both halves run on
A shadow cannot exist without two things: a light, and a solid body standing in it. That is why the same word does both jobs — and why, in either column, a shadow is never evidence that nothing is there.
Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ.The verse that states the figure outright, and note that verse 16's instruction is about who may judge, not about what may be kept.
The word σκια, shadow, is often used to express any thing imperfect or unsubstantial; while the term σωμα, body, was used in the opposite sense, and expressed any thing substantial, solid, and firm.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Colossians 2:17
Between those things themselves which are in Christ, and those which only represented or prefigured them, there is as much difference as there is between a body and a shadow; a solid substance and a mere outline.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Colossians 2:17
The Shadow You Get Under
in a country where the sun is a danger
For You have been a refuge for the poor, a stronghold for the needy in distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like rain against a wall,Two dangers named in one verse: the storm and the heat, and one answer given for both.
The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is the shade on your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.Not a place to shelter in. A person, standing in a particular position relative to you and the sun.
He is a refuge from the storm of rain or hail, and a shadow from the scorching heat of the sun in summer. God is a sufficient protection to his people in all weathers, hot and cold, wet and dry.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Isaiah 25:4
A modern reader has to work slightly to feel this. Shade is pleasant here; there it was survival. Albert Barnes reads the verse against what was actually happening to the people being addressed, and finds the storm doing double duty:
A shadow from the heat - (See Isa 4:6, note; Isa 16:3, note; compare Isa 32:2.) When the blast of the terrible ones - Of the fierce, mighty, invading enemies. When they sweep down all before them as a furious tempest does.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Isaiah 25:4
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.The most quoted shadow in the Bible, and the verb under 'dwelleth' is quieter than the English suggests.
The word rendered dwelleth here is a participle from the verb to sit, and here means sitting: literally, sitting in the secret place, etc. The idea is that of calm repose; of resting; of sitting down - as one does in his dwelling.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Psalm 91:1
Sitting down. The picture is not somebody sprinting for cover when the weather turns; it is somebody who lives there. Spurgeon presses the same point and refuses to make the promise cheaper than it is:
The blessings here promised are not for all believers, but for those who live in close fellowship with God. Every child of God looks towards the inner sanctuary and the mercyseat, yet all do not dwell in the most holy place; they run to it at times, and enjoy occasional approaches, but they do not habitually reside in the mysterious presence.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, on Psalm 91, 1885Baptist
Psalm 91:1
Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wingsTwo images of protection in one sentence, and both are about something small being covered by something larger.
Take as much care to preserve me now by Divine influence, as thou hast to preserve my eye by thy good providence. Thou hast entrenched it deeply in the skull; hast ramparted it with the forehead and cheek-bones; defended it by the eyebrow, eyelids, and eyelashes; and placed it in that situation where the hands can best protect it.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Psalm 17:8
No part of the body more precious, more tender, and more carefully guarded than the eye; and of the eye, no portion more peculiarly to be protected than the central apple, the pupil, or as the Hebrew calls it, "the daughter of the eye." The all wise Creator has placed the eye in a well protected position; it stands surrounded by projecting bones like Jerusalem encircled by mountains.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, on Psalm 17, 1869Baptist
Psalm 17:8
Jonah's shadow: the one thing in the book he is glad abouta plant, a sulking prophet, and a tenderness the story does not comment on
Jonah has just watched a city repent and is furious about it. He builds himself a booth outside the walls to wait and see what happens, and God grows a plant over him. The narrator records his reaction without irony: he was exceeding glad of it.
It was a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief, that, being refreshed in body, he might the better guard against the uneasiness of his mind, which outward crosses and troubles are often the occasion and increase of. See how tender God is of his people in their afflictions, yea, though they are foolish and froward, nor is he extreme to mark what they do amiss.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Jonah 4:6
Little as the shelter of the palm-christ was in itself, Jonah must have looked upon its sudden growth, as a fruit of Gods goodness toward him, (as it was) and then perhaps went on to think (as people do) that this favor of God showed that He meant, in the end, to grant him what his heart was set upon.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Jonah 4:6
Barnes is doing something careful there. He does not pretend the shadow meant what Jonah took it to mean; he says a man in that state reads a kindness as an endorsement, and Jonah did. The shade was real, and his inference from it was not.
The Shadow Thrown Ahead
skia, and the word Hebrews sets against it
For the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities themselves. It can never, by the same sacrifices offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.Two nouns doing precise work, and English gives them both a vague word.
σκιά
skia — shadow
The outline a body throws. Also, in ordinary Greek, an artist’s first sketch — the rough plan of a building or a face, drawn before any of it is filled in.
True to the shape. Not yet the thing.
εἰκών
eikon — image
The finished likeness, from eiko, “I am like”. The form of a thing as it actually is — the sketch with the colours laid in.
The thing itself, seen.
A shadow, σκια, signifies, 1. Literally, the shade cast from a body of any kind, interposed between the place on which the shadow is projected, and the sun or light; the rays of the light not shining on that place, because intercepted by the opacity of the body, through which they cannot pass. 2. It signifies, technically, a sketch, rude plan, or imperfect draught of a building, landscape, man, beast, etc.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hebrews 10:1
Εικων, image, signifies, 1. A simple representation, from εικω, I am like. 2. The form or particular fashion of a thing. 3. The model according to which any thing is formed. 4. The perfect image of a thing as opposed to a faint representation.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hebrews 10:1
Clarke’s second sense of skiais the one that unlocks the verse: in ordinary Greek it was the word for an artist’s rude plan — the outline of a building or a face, laid down first. John Chrysostom, preaching in Greek to people who spoke it, reaches for exactly that:
For as in painting, so long as one only draws the outlines, it is a sort of "shadow" but when one has added the bright paints and laid in the colors, then it becomes "an image." Something of this kind also was the Law.
John Chrysostom· Homily on Hebrews 17, 407Greek, fourth century
Hebrews 10:1
The word shadow here refers to a rough outline of anything, a mere sketch, such as a carpenter draws with a piece of chalk, or such as an artist delineates when he is about to make a picture. He sketches an outline of the object which he designs to draw, which has some resemblance to it, but is not the very image; for it is not yet complete.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Hebrews 10:1
Notice what an outline is and is not. A carpenter’s chalk line on a board is not a lie about the joint he is going to cut — it is accurate, and it is unfinished. Origen reached for a sculptor’s workshop for the same reason:
Before they tackle the statue itself, the one they are going to cast in bronze, silver or gold, they first make a clay model to show what they are aiming at. The model is a necessity, but only until the real statue is finished.
Origen of Alexandria· Homilies on Leviticus 10, 253Alexandrian, third century
Hebrews 10:1
Every one of these pictures makes the same claim about the older Scriptures, and it is worth saying out loud because the opposite is so often preached from these verses: a shadow is not a mistake that got corrected, and an outline is not a forgery. It is the shape of the real thing, drawn first. Hebrews 8:5 makes that unmistakable in its own next clause, where the shadow is built to a pattern God Himself showed:
The place where they serve is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”A shadow of heavenly things, and made, the same verse says, according to the pattern shown in the mount.
The whole Levitical service was a representation and shadow of heavenly things; it appears, therefore, absurd to say that the priests served Unto an example or representation of heavenly things; they served rather unto the substance of those things, With appropriate representations and shadows.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hebrews 8:5
It is very likely that God gave a regular plan and specification of the tabernacle and all its parts to Moses; and that from this Divine plan the whole was constructed.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hebrews 8:5
And on the Colossians side, John Chrysostom notices what Paul actually wrote, which is easy to read past in a hurry:
He said not, "Do not then observe them," but, "let no man judge you."
John Chrysostom· Homily on Colossians 7, 407Greek, fourth century
Colossians 2:16
The sentence is about judgment, not about abolition — and Chrysostom, who is not shy about arguing, marks the distinction rather than collapsing it. A great deal of harsher preaching has been built on these verses than the verses themselves will carry.
The One Shadow People Hoped In
and what Acts actually reports
As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.Read the grammar carefully: the verse reports what they did and what they were hoping for.
This is a good test of whether a page is reading or preaching. Luke says the sick were carried into the streets that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. That is a statement about what the crowds intended. The next verse says everyone was healed. Between those two sentences, Luke does not say the shadow did it.
I cannot see all the miraculous influence here that others profess to see. The people who had seen the miracles wrought by the apostles pressed with their sick to share the healing benefit
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Acts 5:15
As, therefore, they could not get Peter or the other apostles, personally, to all their sick, they thought if they placed them on that side of the way where the shadow was projected, (the sun probably now declining, and consequently the shadow lengthening), they should be healed by the shadow of the man passing over them, in whose person such miraculous powers were lodged.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Acts 5:15
Clarke even reconstructs the logistics: too many sick for the apostles to reach one at a time, a sun going down, a shadow getting longer, and people laying their relatives on the side of the street it would fall across. He is not explaining the miracles away — the chapter says the sick were healed. He is declining to add a detail the text withholds. Matthew Henry draws the practical line:
so that it is absurd to infer hence a healing virtue in the relics of saints that are dead and gone; we read not of any cured by the relics of Christ himself, after he was gone, as certainly we should if there had been any such thing.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Acts 5:15-16
Others read it straightforwardly the other way — Bede, in the eighth century, simply says the shadow fell on them and they were healed: “So that as Peter came along, at least his shadow might fall on some of them and they would be healed.” Both readings are available from the verse, and it is honest to say so rather than to pick one and present it as the text.
Where It Points
the body that casts it
Both halves of the symbol arrive at the same person, and Colossians 2:17 does the joining itself. The body that throws the outline is Christ — and the body a man gets under, out of a light that would kill him, is the same body.
Which is why the third shadow in Scripture belongs here too, the one nobody wants to be in:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.Even the darkest use of the word keeps the grammar of the others: it is a valley walked through, with someone alongside.
The shepherd psalm does not promise a way round it. It puts a person in it with you, and the sentence turns on that: for thou art with me. Which is the shelter sense of the symbol arriving in the one place the outline sense was always heading for.
What Scripture says outright
- Colossians 2:17
“A shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” The symbol and its meaning in one sentence, with the solid thing named.
- Hebrews 10:1
The law is called a shadow of good things to come and not the very image — the writer distinguishing two Greek words on purpose.
- Hebrews 8:5
The tabernacle is a shadow of heavenly things, and the same verse says it was made to a pattern God showed Moses. The shadow is not an approximation somebody invented.
- Psalm 121:5
“The LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.” The shelter sense stated with a person as the shade, not a place.
What readers have heard in it
Readings and inferences, named as such.
- Acts 5:15
That Peter’s shadow healed people. The verse reports what the crowds carried the sick out hoping for; the healing is reported in the next verse without a cause attached.
- Colossians 2:16
That “shadow” here means the older observances were a mistake now repudiated. Paul’s instruction in the verse is about who may sit in judgment, and a shadow is cast by the real thing, not instead of it.
- Psalm 91:1
That the psalm’s protections are unconditional for everyone. Spurgeon reads the first verse as the condition of the rest, and the psalm does open with a description of a place a person is living in.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the shadows in the order the Bible sets them
Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wings
Two images in one line — the most protected part of the body, and the shade under a wing. Both are about being small and covered.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
The other famous shadow, and the only one in Scripture that is frightening — and even here the verse is about walking through it, not living in it.
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
The verb underneath 'dwelleth' is to sit down. This is not a dash for cover; it is where a person lives.
The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is the shade on your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The shade is not a place here. It is a person, positioned — at your right hand, between you and the sun.
For You have been a refuge for the poor, a stronghold for the needy in distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like rain against a wall,
Shelter named for the two things that kill in that country: the storm, and the heat.
So the LORD God appointed a vine, and it grew up to provide shade over Jonah’s head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant.
A plant grown overnight to shade a sulking prophet. Of everything in the book, the shadow is the thing he is glad about.
As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.
The one place a shadow itself is hoped in — and the verse is careful about whose hope it is reporting.
Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ.
And the turn: a shadow of things to come — but the body is of Christ. The word for body is soma, a solid thing.
The place where they serve is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
The tabernacle is called a shadow of heavenly things — and the same verse says it was built to a pattern God showed Moses.
For the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities themselves. It can never, by the same sacrifices offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.
The most exact sentence on the subject: a shadow, and not the very image. Two different Greek words, and English hides the difference.
The Voices
with the work named
Adam Clarke does the decisive work twice. On Hebrews 10:1 he sets out four senses of skia and four of eikon, with quotations from Philostratus and Cicero to show how the words were actually used — and the second sense of skia, an artist’s rough plan, is the one the verse turns on. On Acts 5:15 he does the opposite kind of work and declines to find a miracle the text does not claim.
John Chrysostom supplies the image an eighth-grader can hold — the outline, and then the colours — and, on Colossians, the small careful observation that Paul wrote about judging rather than about stopping. Albert Barnes finds the verb under “dwelleth” and the carpenter’s chalk line. Spurgeon refuses to make Psalm 91 cheaper than it is. Origen’s clay model and Matthew Henry’s all-weathers line each land the same point from a different trade.
Where to Go Next
Where the outline is the subject
Where the shelter is the subject
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: