Do the heavens have highlights to reflect God’s glory cosmologically? They do declare God’s glory! What of its hues? Can one find any clues? Recently, I posted about the colors related to the biblical worldview of the sanctuary as cosmological in nature, taking various clips from drafts of my dissertation I could not utilize under the constraints I was afforded when submitting that got cut on the editing floor. One can see that initial blog post here. That post has generated some interest and even possible blowback amid an apparent lack of understanding of the biblical liturgy and even modern liturgy in practice in some higher church traditions within Christianity; thus, I wanted to revisit it today to clarify. I find the book of Leviticus quite fascinating while most are clueless and one’s reading can become listless unless one can get behind the text to see what lies beneath their thinking. One may wish to review that post before continuing here. In that blog, I admit that the flow of the post does not go very well as I just threw in various sections of various drafts of my dissertation with the data points, I was working to ferret out these concepts. As a result, clearly, it is not my best writing. I was not well when I posted it, but I will let it stand as it is in my weakness and offer this helpful supplement to make it more transparent.
While there is no straightforward verse in the HB to support outright a color-coded schema up front in the sanctuary’s design, one can pull directly out of the text, many data points would allow one to infer the possibility of such. In my dissertation, I surveyed many scholars who argue for the hierarchical status of the degradations within the compound and laid that map cosmologically over the reality behind Israel’s worldview, comparing it with ANE accounts which seem to support such a theme. I took portions related to the weekly Bible discussion I attend online and tried to show a bit of what is behind the colors. This week they wanted more, so I am back to typing a further response.
To begin with, I discussed the connection between the variegated levels of sacred space of the entire compound beginning outside. It should be noted that the color red or scarlet seems to be woven into the accounts of the text when considering actions related to the activities outside with the ceremony of the red heifer and sacrifices of blood involving scarlet threads. Even the outside covering is correlated to scarlet (Le 14:4, 6, 49, 51, 52. Nu 4:8. 19:6). It is not until one enters into the Holy Place where one then begins to see as expected the mixtures of which I cover in the dissertation as relating to the transitory nature of passing from earth into heaven via the skies as modeled in Israel’s sacred space at their sanctuary (e.g., Ex 25:4. 26:1, 31, 36. 27:16. 28:5, 6, 8, 15, 33. 35:6, 23, 25, 35. 36:8, 35, 37. 38:18, 23. 39:1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 24, 29). This occurs by ascension.
However, when the high priest is no longer in transition (and once a year on Yom Kippur goes into the Most Holy Place), he foregoes his traditional mixed garments and wears the simple white unmixed uniform. He passes beyond the veil and rides the clouds to ascend to YHWH’s very throne room, which is attending by beings when present on the earth wear the white garments and get reflected in the accounts in John’s Revelation as the color of heaven. To me then, this does denote that as one passes from this red earth as Randy Stonehill crooned “dirt clod out in space” in his track Great Big Stupid World into the skies/heavens on into the third heaven where YHWH dwells, one passes from red or scarlet to the mixtures of scarlet to purple and then to blue on into the white.
Interestingly, in the NTSK, “Ada Habershon suggests scarlet typifies Christ’s earthly glory, noting the same word means worm at Jb 25:6; Ps 22:6. Specially connected with Israel or Judah—the national color (Outline Studies of the Tabernacle, p. 32).”[1] When Pharaoh elevates Joseph to second in the kingdom where the king represents “god” on earth for the Egyptians, he clothes Joseph with fine linens utilizing the same term tied to the colored fine linen in Exod 25:4 of the sanctuary and the high priestly garments. So the ascension language I detail in scholarship in my dissertation may include color-coding of sorts to model his travels as a mere man to being God’s “man” once a year and garner entry to the places where the likes of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Enoch have in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature ascended of which Paul also witnesses in 2 Cor 12.
No, there is not one single verse where one can make such an assertion. However, there is enough to see the scarlet/red outside with the mixed colors reflecting the cosmos and the sun’s trajectory daily from dawn to dusk then in Sheol against the blue skies to see why the high priest ascend the same from East and outside where one sees death toward the West into the Most Holy Place, and he dons the simple white that most heavenly beings in the HB and NT especially Revelation do. According to the model I argue throughout my dissertation, it would seem plausible to posit a possible connection to these colors cosmologically focused on the Pentateuchal patterns I lay out there in that work.
If one feels blue, it may be one is in transition to a higher state of glory with God’s light to shine on one’s darkness in these days where silver linings are hard to come by! It would certainly seem we are made of more glorious stuff when one sees how the patterns and rhythms in the Pentateuch afford one such an extraordinary paradigm for the ancients to understand they could approach and ascend to the heights of heaven in some limited sense which Christ has paved the way for the NT believer to participate in such even more so! Some Christian traditions call this theosis. The challenges one may face merely are to cause one to ascend to higher heights and highlight that without him we can do nothing, but with the same God behind the Philippian church where all things are possible as Paul described affords us the way of Christ’s cross that in our weakness he becomes that perfect strength to bring us through the catalog of trials we face even as Paul surmounted it all for God’s glory to bear the marks of the Crucified One who forever is exalted while offering exaltation to the downtrodden by his Body the Church to extend a hand in time of need to bring justice so that God’s glory can fill the earth!
[1] Jerome H. Smith, The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge: The Most Complete Listing of Cross References Available Anywhere- Every Verse, Every Theme, Every Important Word (Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992), 113.
