Each week I try to participate in a weekly Bible study online on Saturdays via the online community at Sentinel Apologetics based out of Perth, Australia. I recently joined, having completed my dissertation. They have done Ephesians and Revelation previously. Now we are doing Mark’s Gospel. Last night we ended chapter 6:56, which states:
56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.[1]
Rob leads the study choosing to use the ISV while I tend to use the ESV. The focus on the tallit and the significance of the blue thread brought up memories of when I was locked down in a remote mountain village while writing my dissertation. My laptop was breathing its last as the dust filled the old device, which soon expired.
My wife loves a picture of our children’s faces covered with the red clay from that trip—all dirt-covered and enjoying the time of their life as the world outside was in turmoil over the pandemic. We had found our lil’ paradise. Everything we needed was there. Just go someplace on the mountain and gather the food and prepare it. This is the way they had lived for centuries.
As I am studying the colors of YHWH’s sanctuary in the Pentateuch, I am envisioning the priest making an ascension. As a person enters the sacred space, they come from the outside. This models Eden and Adam’s coming from the outside whereby God almost plants him in the garden as its keeper (Gen 2:8). He comes from the earth outside or what I conceive to be following Noegel’s views covered briefly previously to be Sheol. Gen 2:7 states,
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.[2]
All humanity is outside and enters into God’s holy ground at his invitation to participate. The outer court, as written in my dissertation, represents Middle Earth, with the Holy Place being the heavens or skies where the planets rule as lights in the night’s skies as
signs and for seasons, and for days and years.[3]
Finally, the Most Holy Place is that of God’s dwelling where his presence is directly connected in the temple being a shadow yet overlapped with what is in the highest heaven—what Paul calls in 2 Cor 12 as the “third heaven” to which he ascended on high further modeled in passages like Isa 6. As the priests make their ascension, the environs change, requiring them to adjust their uniforms accordingly. Once a year, the high priest is allowed entry into the Most Holy Place riding on the clouds on incense which models the ANE conceptions of the gods riding the clouds wearing what angels often wear in the white garments which believers wear throughout John’s Revelation. I note the significance of this in a draft of my dissertation where I state:*
Haran insists the fabrics related to the inner sanctum and the Most Holy Place/qōḏeš-qāḏāšîm are mixed threads, “since according to Old Testament tradition, the appearance of a heterogeneous mixture is taken as a hallmark of holiness. It is precisely for this reason that such a mixture, described as kil’ayim in the Old Testament, was forbidden in all its possible forms in everyday life.”[4] The mixture of priestly garments consists of the sanctuary’s corresponding textiles and in its interwoven inhabitants of the multi-dimensional world above, which reflects a shift from the immanent to the transcendent in the multi-faced and oddly embodied hybrid entities (e.g., the cherubim) which in their design have aspects of each domain (Exod 25:18-22; 26:1, 31; 1 Kgs 6:23-29, 32; Lev 18:22-23; Ezek 1:5-11; 10:1-20; cf. Rev 4:3-11). Kings ride mixed breed mules (uncritically) connected to divinity (2 Sam 13:29; 19:9; 1 Kgs 1:33).
As the priest occupies deeper sacred space, the mixture intensifies from one’s belt to one’s entire garment.[5] Sacred space sets up a lot of ritual purity laws whereby depending on the compartment one is to access specific parameters the clothing must be changed to suit the graded spaces each to their own kind. Haran avers, “the wearing of these garments inside the tabernacle becomes an act of ritual significance.”[6]
When the high priest finally enters the innermost sanctum only once a year on Yom Kippur, he does not don this mixture of clothing. Instead, significantly, pointing to his ascension, he matches angelic vestments in mere white unadorned garments (Lev 16:4). As he moves out of his liminal status and reaches the other end of Holiness’ Spectrum, he once again adorns himself in clothing unmixed, noting his arrival to the “other side.” Nelson describes such liminality paradoxically as “a period of humiliation and ordeal, but also of sacrality and power.”[7]
The Israelite is set apart by one form of ritual apparel in the blue thread mixed in the tassels of corners of each’s vestment (Num 15:37-51). The mixture of the unique “inner” incense is only to be combined within the sanctuary’s sacral precincts (Exod 30:22-38) and never compounded thereby nor used outside while common incense could never be utilized inside. The mixed garments could transfer their holiness to the ordinary people and remain confined within sacred precincts (Ezek 44:17-19). The blood applied to the Most Holy Place’s kappōreṯ is a mixture of goats and bulls (Lev 16:14-15).
The colors of the fabrics match the cosmos, moving from red to blue with a mixed state of purple betwixt them. White is not a color per se but rather the reflection of most all (mixed) colors. One does not see only white. One sees most everything in the full spectrum’s entire range. Black is the absence of color as it reflects nothing—absorbs all—being nothing or no color or hue.
Such mixtures repeatedly connect with mixing about differing realms. Only YHWH and in his domain can such mixing not be associated with chaos and a non-ordered state. In YHWH, one finds all mixed in one perfect unified ordered state of existence as only God encompasses all. The vineyard mentioned above is holy because of this mixing of seeds. Such a mixture represents Israel (the mixed multitude from Egypt [Exod 12:38], which included some Canaanites) who in Isa 5 sadly instead forsook such holiness to prostitute themselves in whoring after other gods rather than remaining solely YHWH’s.
Holiness begets separations and mixtures. Zones have unique properties for each’s décor in those allowed to indwell (including their trappings) and the rituals practiced. Moses exemplifies this as leading God’s people whereby the offices of priest and king get divided into two tribes yet get united in the Messiah akin to Melchizedek (cf. Zech 4:1-4, 14; 6:9-13). The mixing of the celestial and the terrestrial in Gen 6:1-4 brings about the half-breed mixtures of the Nephilim and result in the flood water’s mixture of the waters above and below.[8]
This combination had been planned in the Incarnation of Christ. It is John the Baptist who initiates immersion before the good news of the Messiah’s arrival. Baptism is a sign of moving into a new reality by waters. As Jesus of Nazareth is both truly God and indeed man, he is not an amalgam like the Nephilim, and it is the immersion of baptism modeling death that one enters the kingdom paradoxically to everlasting life in the more perfect state.
When one dies, one exits the axis. YHWH is outside this axis. In death, one can achieve conceptually becoming as God is outside the spectrum. Through YHWH’s life, one can reenter (by rebirth) the paradigm on the very opposite end of the spectrum from which one exits its terminus, modeling the sun’s daily path. To pass again from death to life remains mysterious and solely in God’s power at his discretion. All are subject to death beyond this existence unless God chooses to intervene as all end up only in Sheol lest YHWH grants an escape.
Earlier in this draft, I mention:*
When Aaron goes into the innermost sanctum once a year on Yom Kippur, his inner garments reflect the plain white linen as often depicted by angelic beings (cf. Ezek 9:2–3, 11; 10:2; Dan 10:5; 12:6–7). Instead of emphasizing a mixture with the priest in transit from one domain to another, the fine linen signifies a status of the third realm being its own and Aaron completing the transformation into another being fit to fellowship in an entirely different realm mirroring the glory of its perfection. Haran upholds, “[t]hese garments serve to indicate a kind of dialectical elevation into that sphere which is beyond even the material, contagious holiness characterizing the tabernacle and its accessories” as indicative of the environs in which he resides.[9]
In Zech 3:1-7, Joshua plausibly representing as the high priest the returnees from the exile will be regranted the previously lost access to the divine council with his own cohort (3:8). The narrative focuses on his clothing. The changing of his clothing grants restored access to the council. This is to certify the people as, once again, being the people of God, have been outcasts in exile and unclean among the ranks of foreigners in Babylon.
Joshua and Zerubbabel represent the leadership as two olives trees (4:12-14) that Nelson surmises some connect to ANE depictions “of two trees flanking the new moon or the gate of heaven.”[10] The two trees model the bifurcation of Moses’ leadership paralleling the two pillars which stand outside the sanctuary. Nelson avers of the priest and kingly governor, “[t]hese two do not simply stand before Yahweh in order to serve him, but as prominent dignitaries their position is beside Yahweh (note the Hebrew preposition and compare 1 Kings 22:19).”[11] Similar language is used in Rev 3 of the overcomers who sit enthroned with Christ (Rev. 3:21).
Then concerning creation’s second day, I add:*
The ancients saw the blue skies from which precipitation falls, deducing a corresponding upper ocean matching the lower seas bounded by the rāqîaʿ (Gen 1:7; cf. Rev 4:6; Exod 24:9-11; Job 38:22; Psa 29:3; Prov 3:20).
The firmament is called a sea of glass in Rev 4:6, paralleling Exod. 24:10’s pavement/lĕḇēnâ of sapphire stone (cf. Jn 19:13). The firmament gets depicted as upon the beams of his chambers on the waters. It is modeled in Heb. 12:26-27’s unshakeable kingdom (Ps 104:5). These foundations are forever. All the while, the earth gets renewed with new Heavens and a New Jerusalem that descends and unites to become one in Rev. 21-22. Psalm 29:3 has YHWH’s voice/qôl thundering over these waters from the heaven of heavens in the waters above interestingly antithetical to the waters below—Gen 1:2’s תְּהוֹם—home of the ANE’s chaotic sea monsters as described in Ps 74.
Continuing, I argue concerning the word rāqîaʿ rāqîaʿwhich in understood often as the firmament:*
This word also is used of idols when the goldsmith/ṣrp “spreadeth” (rqʿ) the idol with its gold covering (Isa 40:19) as the gold in the tabernacle is also beaten/rqʿ (Exod 39:3) to make Aaron’s high priestly covering (or ephod) of cloths made of gold and the colors reflecting the cosmos in blue, purple, and scarlet reflecting his transitory interstellar nature upon entering the heavenlies in his priestly duties to mediate between the two realms of mortals and the divine. In Num 16:39 (17:4 in HB), Eleazer also “beats” (rqʿ) the bronze censors from Korah’s rebellion to make a covering for the altar as their contact with the Lord’s fire have made them holy through contagiousness. Such implies the permanence of such holiness upon objects which are never to enter the domain of the mundane again.
One must note its transitory nature in humans who are sent out into the profane to make all the earth like Eden—a point missed in the NT by the Pharisees in their bidding to please YHWH by their avoidances. God is first missional in the creation and coming down to make heaven on earth. The sanctuary also exudes such perpetuity, albeit requiring maintenance, lest, at YHWH’s departure, it becomes a target for destruction. Human sin defiles it. This requires atonement rituals for the two spheres to co-exist so that the earth “be” as it is in heaven. Priestly holiness consisted primarily within the sacred precincts.
The rāqîaʿ is where all life, especially humanity, inhabits breathing its air, again reflecting Eden as a sphere where the celestial and terrestrial meet. They walk on the earth above ground marking their distinction with the underworld. The rāqîaʿ is also the space where humans dwelt upon the earth as the waters are divided, allowing room for earthling occupancy. This logic continues in replacing the gods of the ANE with humans in the Hebrew cosmology, allowing initially for an elevated status once matured but lost in Gen 3’s privation and exile. While in the ANE, the gods’ realm is originally what the Hebrews call the rāqîaʿ, in the HB it is the realm ʾāḏām rules as YHWH’s viceroys.
In later sections, I add:*
The sky/rāqîa‘ remains left as an open space betwixt the two underneath the canopy/šĕḥāqîm. Such an understanding has led some to view the blue pavement under YHWH’s feet as a window of heaven within the transparent šĕḥāqîm (Exod 24:10; cf. Mal 3:10). Brettler holds the possibility of royal palaces being paved in blue.[12] Could this reflect the heavenly palace resting on the waters above in many ANE cosmologies?
Design elements with some woven into the fabric include items from Eden in the flowers, trees, and the cherubim of Gen 3:24 as guardians to take Adam’s place when he fell. In Jub 2:2, the angelic hosts of Gen 2:1 (cf. Job 38:7) are understood as a part of the very fabric of the cosmos that the sanctuary weaves into its drapery. They are “associated with the ordering of the natural world.”[13] In 1 En. 60:12–22 as well as Jubilees, they have power in the heavenlies over the sun, moon, and stars.
Josephus comments on its colors*
(212) …Nor was this mixture of colors without its mystical interpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; (213) for by the scarlet there seemed to be enigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the earth, by the blue the air, and by the purple the sea; two of them having their colors the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax and the purple have their own origin for that foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the other. (214) This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens, excepting that of the [twelve] signs, representing living creatures.[14]
The veil/pārōḵet further is used to cover both the ark and the kappōreṯ (its lid or covering) when in transit. Haran posits how “[i]n cultic ceremonies this veil sometimes serves as a kind of projection and ‘shadow’ of the kappōret behind it (Lev. 4:6, 17).”[15] In the NT, when this veil is torn asunder, the shadow of things or former copies/patterns of that which is to come get removed, so that realia of the kingdom dawns in a new age in the now until the not yet fully manifests in the Eschaton. The veil in its manufacture begins with the most special blue fabric with final additions of mixed wools while the converse is true of the other curtains starting with the mixed weavings, and at the end, the specialized blue fabric is incorporated into their designs more marginally. Such is the design of the priestly adornments. The design of the fabrics as one moves outward as the furniture decreases in intricacy, matching such shades of holiness as each precinct’s design features diminishes overall in variation towards the less extraordinary.
These conceptions were filling my mind and, unfortunately, had to be edited out of what became the final draft of my dissertation for submission due to the constraints afforded me by the small university where I did my doctoral work. More generally, I argue the priest makes an ascent then from the outer court into the most holy place whereby the dirty (following much symbolism of the high priest Joshua in Zechariah) human of red, earthly clay of which there is a play grammatically in use in James’s Amos 9 quote in Acts 15 concerning Adam, Edom, and humanity in Jesus’s mission as one moves from the red clay up into the skies by riding the clouds produced in the sacrifices and incense to participate with YHWH as someone otherly and no longer merely of this world but akin to Paul’s statement of
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,[16]
As John states:
2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.[17]
I look and see we are red and walk even though in the land of the living more so:
through the valley of the shadow of death, [Or the valley of deep darkness].[18]
When one enters YHWH’s specialized space, it is the realm of life as it was always intended to be, even as he as the I AM represents what true being is in all his fulness. Again, to quote myself in the two goats on the Day of Atonement:*
One ascends to heaven’s heights (representing life and the source of all being). The other is taken not only outside the camp. Most impurity ends up outside in the wilderness. This symbolizes descending to Sheol itself (representing death—cf. m. Yom. 6.6—and a state of anti-being).
As I try to understand what the ancients must be thinking, I am reminded of how Hugh Ross explains the stars today versus the stars back then. When I made a trip to Africa years ago, I could see the sky like never before in the remote village as there was hardly any light pollution. It was as if one could reach up and pluck the stars out of the night’s skies and behold their much crisper state of glory. The feeling was quite surreal to see them as YHWH intended.
In this Asian village, I look down and see my arm and the veins. They match this conception—blue. I am living and unharmed, protected in the “skin” YHWH gave me within my mother’s womb. Any intrusion will cause the oxygenated blood to show forth my mortal nature in the red blood of whom I am as a mere human bound to mortality apart from YHWH’s glorification in the age to come. As there is no one like YHWH, there are none like those who become like him via participation in his glory as intended from the beginning. All of those boring passages of ritual in the Pentateuch house great treasures from which the ancients understood not only who God is, but whom God desires us to be when in participation or communion with him by his design. They are not primitive in their thinking as much as we might be distracted in believing what we believe to be far more superior to theirs. The questions begs. Will anyone be reading this blog post or what we have written in the millennia to come if God’s patience persists as so many today are still infatuated with their writings from so long ago?
Maybe we turn blue due to a lack of oxygen that will send us on to our next stage in the life to come. That can be a horrifying prospect, but for those who believe in God’s intendment, it is a marvel for which we embrace the afterlife as our next new beginning in a new creation! I pray this post finds you feeling bluer amid the sea of red here in this life as we model that which is coming in the kingdom here on the earth just as it is in heaven!
So, when the ordinary Israelite wears the blue thread at the fringe out boundary of his garment, he is exuding this aura of the royal blue that reflects riding the clouds in ascension or modeling Peter’s walking the sea participating with Jesus in chaoskampf. The mission to fill the earth with God’s glory as it was in Eden so be it in the balance of the earth remains. Each Jew who wears God’s colors reflect his glory in the bright blue that shows his citizenship above reflecting heaven’s rule in and on the earth through earthlings as earthen or clay jars. He represents heaven as God’s man like the priests and prophets of old and now as a Christian like Christ to carry that presence via the Name in the kingdoms that are being transferred from darkness into God’s light. For a visual display of this manifestation so see further this Bible Project video.
I argue in my dissertation the purpose of the temple is to not only reflect the cosmos itself but utilizing Walton’s control room analogy,[19] also in God maintenance of the cosmos along the lines of Douglas, Barker, and Martyn its renewal and re-creation after a de-creation. He chooses to use those who follow him to exemplify this mission in taming the chaos and offering the purification to allow participation where privation has separated humanity from God. In this sense Christ via the Holy Spirit brings heaven on earth is us as the third temple until the final coming of the New Jerusalem unites all in Rev 21-22 as prophesied in Isa 65-66. In this final temple, the Lord’s prayer in John 17 gets answered!
*[Admittedly, some of my quotations from drafts of my dissertation are just strung together and may not cohere as well as I would like here, but I think one can catch the drift as I keep tons of material in between that are not exactly related to the idea of blue. Each section above is in a draft with lots of paragraphs removed to shorten it for this post. I just skipped through the pages pulling out paragraphs pertinent to this thread specifically.]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mk 6:56.
[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 2:7.
[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 1:14.
[4] Lev. 19:19; Deut. 22:9, 11. Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 160.
[5] Exod 26:31; Exod 39:29; Ezek 44:17; Heb 9:19. Cf. the ephod, breastplate, and belt of the priests; also 2 Pet 3:8-13, Rev 20:7-21:6.
[6] Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 212.
[7] Richard D. Nelson, Raising up a Faithful Priest: Community and Priesthood in Biblical Theology, First edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 58.
[8] E.g., see George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch. Edited by Klaus Baltzer. Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 71-88; Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Loren T. Stuckenbruck, ‘The Book of Enoch: Its Reception in Second Temple Jewish and in Christian Tradition’, EC 4: 2013, 7-40; idem, The Myth of Rebellious Angels. (WUNT, 335; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).
[9] Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 174.
[10] Richard D. Nelson, Raising up a Faithful Priest: Community and Priesthood in Biblical Theology, First edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 123.
[11] Richard D. Nelson, Raising up a Faithful Priest: Community and Priesthood in Biblical Theology, First edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 123, italicization original.
[12] Marc Zvi Brettler, God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor, vol. 76, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 83n21.
[13] Tyler Stewart, “Fallen Angels, Bastard Spirits, and the Birth of God’s Son: An Enochic Etiology of Evil in Galatians 3:19–4:11,” San Diego, CA: Unpublished SBL Conference Paper, 2014, 12.
[14] J.W. 5.212–14: Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 707.
[15] Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 161f.
[16] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 3:20.
[17] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 3:2–3.
[18] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 23:4.
[19] John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 115ff.
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