Clothing

Clothing in the UPDV runs from the first improvised covering in Eden to the visions of garments in Revelation. The thread that holds the topic together is that what a person puts on speaks: it identifies a priest or a king, marks mourning or feasting, signals modesty or ostentation, and stands again and again as a metaphor for righteousness, iniquity, and the human condition before God.

Origins: from fig leaves to skins

The earliest garments are improvised. When the eyes of the man and his wife are opened in Eden, "they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (Gen 3:7). That covering is replaced by something better made: "And [the Speech of] Yahweh God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them" (Gen 3:21). The first proper clothing in the UPDV is divinely sewn from animal skin.

Materials and construction

The Bible's main fibers are wool, linen, and goats' hair, sometimes joined with skins. The tabernacle's craftsmen are issued "blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' [hair]" (Ex 35:6), and the curtains are "made the tabernacle with ten curtains; of fine twined linen" (Ex 36:8). Linen passes from sanctuary fabric to private craft — "She makes linen garments and sells them, And delivers belts to the merchant" (Pr 31:24).

Mixing fibers is forbidden in Israel: "You will not wear a mingled stuff, wool and linen together" (De 22:11). Garments are also bound by the requirement of fringes: "You will make yourself fringes on the four borders of your vesture, with which you cover yourself" (De 22:12).

Priestly garments

A whole register of clothing belongs to the worship of Yahweh. Aaron's vestments are commissioned in distinct language: "And you will make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty" (Ex 28:2). His sons receive their own set — "And for Aaron's sons you will make coats, and you will make for them belts, and head-tires" (Ex 28:40). Investiture is itself a rite: "And you will take the garments, and put on Aaron the coat, and the robe of the ephod" (Ex 29:5); "And he put on him the coat, and girded him with the belt, and clothed him with the robe" (Lev 8:7). The priesthood is transmitted through the wardrobe — "And the holy garments of Aaron will be for his sons after him, to be anointed in them" (Ex 29:29) — and removed through it again: "and strip Aaron of his garments, and put them on Eleazar his son: and Aaron will be gathered" (Nu 20:26).

The materials are specific. The craftsmen "made finely wrought garments, for ministering" out of "the blue, and purple, and scarlet" (Ex 39:1), and the head coverings are "the turban of fine linen, and the goodly head-tires of fine linen, and the linen breeches" (Ex 39:28). Ezekiel's vision of the restored sanctuary keeps the same fabric: priests "will be clothed with linen garments" (Eze 44:17), with "linen tires on their heads, and... linen breeches on their loins" (Eze 44:18). The Day of Atonement sets a special set apart — "And Aaron will come into the tent of meeting, and will put off the linen garments, which he put on when he went into the holy place" (Lev 16:23).

When David brings the ark up to Jerusalem he dresses for it: "And David danced before Yahweh with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod" (2Sa 6:14); "And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, and all the Levites who bore the ark, and the singers... [and] David had on him an ephod of linen" (1Ch 15:27). Hannah keeps Samuel's small priestly robe in the same family register: "Moreover his mother made him a little robe, and brought it to him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice" (1Sa 2:19). Later, in the Maccabean priesthood, Jonathan is invested as high priest in the same kind of holy vestment: "Then Jonathan put on the holy vestment in the seventh month, in the year one hundred and sixtieth" (1Ma 10:21).

Royal and prestige clothing

Royalty has a wardrobe of its own. Joseph's elevation in Egypt is dressed: "And Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand, and put it on Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen" (Gen 41:42). Babylonian and Persian courts use the same idiom — Daniel is rewarded with imperial clothing ("Then Belshazzar commanded, and they clothed Daniel with purple, and put a chain of gold about his neck" — Da 5:29) and Mordecai "went forth from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white" (Es 8:15). Esther 6 spells the convention out: "let royal apparel be brought which the king uses to wear, and the horse that the king rides on" (Es 6:8). Jonathan is clothed with purple in the same Maccabean ceremony that grants him civic rank: "And he commanded that Jonathan's garments should be taken off, and that he should be clothed with purple" (1Ma 10:62).

Within Israel the king's daughters wear specific dress — "she had a garment of diverse colors on her; for with such robes were the king's daughters" (2Sa 13:18) — and the king's bride is described in cloth of gold: "The king's daughter inside [the palace] is all glorious: Her clothing is inwrought with gold" (Ps 45:13). Jonathan's gift to David is the symbolic transfer of his own princely wardrobe: "And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him, and gave it to David" (1Sa 18:4). David's lament for Saul recalls a queen's gift to the women of Israel: "Who clothed you⁺ in scarlet delicately" (2Sa 1:24).

Common dress and head coverings

Outside the sanctuary and the court, ordinary clothing has its own vocabulary. Joseph's coat of many colors marks the favored son: "and he made him a coat of many colors" (Gen 37:3). Rebekah uses Esau's "goodly garments" to dress Jacob (Gen 27:15). Mantles cover the prophets — "Elijah... wrapped his face in his mantle" (1Ki 19:13); "Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and struck the waters" (2Ki 2:8); "He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him" (2Ki 2:13).

Daniel 3:21 catalogues the layered dress of an exilic court: the men "were bound in their hosen, their tunics, and their mantles." Isaiah 3 catalogues the wardrobe of Jerusalem's daughters in detail: "the festival robes, and the mantles, and the shawls, and the satchels; the hand-mirrors, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the veils" (Isa 3:22-23), set within the longer indictment of "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with outstretched necks" (Isa 3:16).

The kerchief and the headtire belong to false and true uses: "Woe to the women who sew pillows on all elbows, and make kerchiefs for the head of [persons of] every stature to hunt souls" (Eze 13:18); the same pieces are torn off when Yahweh delivers his people: "Your⁺ kerchiefs also I will tear" (Eze 13:21). In Ezekiel's sign of suppressed mourning, the headtire stays on: "bind your headtire on you, and put your sandals on your feet, and don't cover your lips" (Eze 24:17), and again, "your⁺ tires will be on your⁺ heads, and your⁺ sandals on your⁺ feet" (Eze 24:23). Mark notes the tassel-like end of a robe simply: "having a linen cloth cast about him, over [his] naked body" (Mar 14:51), and Ezekiel uses the lap of the prophet's robe — the skirts — as a picture: "you will take of them a few in number, and bind them in your skirts" (Eze 5:3).

In the New Testament, the long robe is associated with public ostentation: "Beware of the scribes, who desire to walk in long robes" (Mar 12:38). The sleeveless inner shirt — the coat — figures in Jesus' teaching on submission ("from him who takes away your cloak, don't withhold your coat also" — Lu 6:29) and in the soldiers' division of his clothing: "took his garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part; and also the coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout" (John 19:23). The mock-royal "purple garment" is the soldiers' own joke ("the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and arrayed him in a purple garment" — John 19:2; "Jesus therefore came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment" — John 19:5). At the cross, the psalmic line "They part my garments among them, And on my vesture they cast lots" (Ps 22:18) supplies the framing.

Modesty and gender

Specific rules govern dress. Crossing the gender line is forbidden: "A woman will not wear that which pertains to a man, neither will a man put on a woman's garment" (De 22:5). Modesty is enjoined on women in worship: "that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefastness and sobriety" (1Ti 2:9), and Peter directs the same instinct inward — "Whose [adorning] let it not be the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel" (1Pe 3:3). Excess is folly: "Though he heaps up silver as the dust, And prepares raiment as the clay" (Job 27:16).

White dress is associated with feasting and joy: "Let your garments always be white; and don't let your head lack oil" (Ec 9:8).

Garments in legal and economic life

Clothing is property and currency. Garments are taken in pledge but must be returned by sundown: "If you at all take your fellow man's garment for a pledge, you will restore it to him before the sun goes down" (Ex 22:26). Clothing is transferred as a gift — "To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin he gave three hundred [shekels of] silver, and five changes of raiment" (Gen 45:22); the Syrian king sends "ten changes of raiment" with Naaman's letter (2Ki 5:5).

Clothing also requires ceremonial attention. Garments touched by certain unclean things must be washed: "whether it is any vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin, or sack... it must be put into water, and it will be unclean until the evening" (Lev 11:32); booty from war must be purified ("as to every garment, and all that is made of skin, and all work of goats' [hair]... you⁺ will purify yourselves" — Nu 31:20). Leprosy in a garment receives its own extended legislation: "the priest will look at the plague, and shut up [that which has] the plague seven days... if the plague has spread in the garment... the plague is a fretting leprosy" (Lev 13:50-51), and the verdict ends in either washing or burning (Lev 13:52, 58, 59).

Mourning, rending, and rich apparel

Grief tears clothing. Job rises and rends his robe (Job 1:20); Ezra rends his garment and his robe (Ezr 9:3). The prosperity gift of Joseph's brothers reverses that gesture in giving clothing as a sign of restored welcome (Gen 45:22). At the other end of the spectrum, the rich man "was clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day" (Lu 16:19), and James reads garment-status as a test of partiality: "and you⁺ have regard to him who wears the fine clothing, and say, You sit here in a good place" (Jas 2:3). Paul disclaims that posture: "neither at any time did we come in words of flattery, as you⁺ know, nor in a cloak of covetousness" (1Th 2:5). His own modest possession, "the cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus" (2Ti 4:13), sits alongside his books.

Pagan and apostate clothing

Some garments mark the wrong worship. Jehu summons "vestments for all the worshipers of Baal" (2Ki 10:22) so that the Baal-worshipers can be sorted out from the slaves of Yahweh (2Ki 10:23) before the slaughter. Zephaniah names "all such as are clothed with foreign apparel" as objects of judgment (Zep 1:8). Tyre's traffickers deal in "wrappings of blue and embroidered work" (Eze 27:24), and Mark records the missionary minimum — "fasten on sandals and don't put on two coats" (Mar 6:9) — that contrasts with all of this.

Clothing as miracle

A small thread runs through the wilderness narratives. Israel's clothes do not wear out: "Your raiment didn't wax old on you, neither did your foot swell, these forty years" (De 8:4); "your⁺ clothes are not waxed old on you⁺, and your sandals have not waxed old on your feet" (De 29:5); "forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, [and] they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wax old, and their feet did not swell" (Ne 9:21). The garment is part of the provision.

Clothing as figure: iniquity and righteousness

The Hebrew prophets and the Psalms turn clothing into a metaphor for the moral life. Pride is a garment: "pride is as a chain about their neck; Violence covers them as a garment" (Ps 73:6). Cursing soaks the wicked man like wet fabric: "He clothed himself also with cursing as with his garment, And it came into his inward parts like water" (Ps 109:18). And the most direct figure for unrighteousness comes from Isaiah: "we have all become as one who is unclean, and all our righteousnesses are as a polluted garment" (Isa 64:6). Joshua the high priest stands in this fabric — "Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments" (Zec 3:3) — until he is publicly stripped and re-clothed: "Take the filthy garments from off him... I have caused your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with rich apparel" (Zec 3:4).

In the New Testament the same metaphor moves into ethical exhortation. Peter warns against using "your⁺ freedom for a cloak of wickedness" (1Pe 2:16); Jude tells the rescuers to hate "even the garment spotted by the flesh" (Jude 1:23).

Nakedness as figure

The reverse image — being unclothed — carries its own theological weight. Paul defines the resurrection hope against being "found naked" (2Co 5:3). The risen Christ rebukes the Laodicean church on this very point: "you say, I am wealthy, and have become rich, and have need of nothing; and don't know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked" (Rev 3:17). Watchfulness is dressed: "Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame" (Rev 16:15). And the rider who returns at the end is named in his clothing — "[he is] arrayed in a garment dipped in blood, and his name is called The Speech of God" (Rev 19:13). Like the heavens themselves, garments are the picture of what wears out and what endures: "all of them will wax old like a garment" (Ps 102:26).