Rending

The tearing of one's own garments is among the most physical of biblical gestures. A man hears a word he cannot bear — news of a death, of defeat, of his own sin, of blasphemy heard in court — and he ruins the cloth on his body. Across the Old Testament narrative the act runs almost as a stock notation for grief, mourning, outrage, or repentance, often paired with sackcloth, dust on the head, fasting, or weeping. By the time of Joel the prophet, the gesture has become so familiar that it can be turned inside out: rend the heart, not the garment. By the night of Jesus' trial, the high priest can perform it as a verdict.

Grief at a Death or a Loss

The pattern begins in the Joseph cycle. Reuben comes back to the cistern and finds his brother gone: "And Reuben returned to the pit; and, look, Joseph wasn't in the pit; and he rent his clothes" (Gen 37:29). Jacob, shown the bloodied tunic, "rent his garments, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days" (Gen 37:34). The same brothers, accused of theft on the road back from Egypt, "rent their clothes, and loaded every man his donkey, and returned to the city" (Gen 44:13).

Job, receiving the news that his children are dead beneath a collapsed house, performs the gesture in worship: "Then Job arose, and rent his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped" (Job 1:20). When his three friends arrive, they do it in chorus on his behalf: "they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven" (Job 2:12).

David's life is full of the gesture. The Amalekite messenger from Saul's defeat appears "with his clothes rent, and earth on his head" (2 Sam 1:2), and David's own response to the news is the same: "Then David took hold on his clothes, and rent them; and likewise all the men who were with him" (2 Sam 1:11). When Abner is killed, David enjoins it on his entire household: "Rend your⁺ clothes, and gird you⁺ with sackcloth, and mourn before Abner" (2 Sam 3:31). Years later, when Absalom is reported (falsely) to have struck down all the king's sons, "the king arose, and rent his garments, and lay on the earth; and all his slaves stood by with their clothes rent" (2 Sam 13:31). When the kingdom collapses around David and Hushai meets him on the ascent, the loyal man comes "with his coat rent, and earth on his head" (2 Sam 15:32). Inside the same household the violation of Tamar takes the same form on a daughter's body: "And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent her garment of diverse colors that was on her" (2 Sam 13:19).

The gesture marks Elisha's loss of his master: "And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!… and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces" (2 Kings 2:12). Jephthah, meeting his daughter at the door, performs the same act under the weight of his vow: "he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low" (Jud 11:35). Mordecai, hearing the decree against the Jews, "rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city" (Est 4:1). At the ruined house of Yahweh after the fall of Jerusalem, eighty men come up from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria "having their beards shaven and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves" (Jer 41:5).

Defeat, Bad News, and Outrage

Where there is no death, the rending still marks an unbearable report. Joshua and the elders, after the rout at Ai, do it together: "And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of Yahweh until the evening, he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust on their heads" (Jos 7:6). At Kadesh, the same Joshua and Caleb make the gesture against their fellow spies' counsel of unbelief: "And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were of those who spied out the land, rent their clothes" (Num 14:6).

It functions as a standard register of crisis at the royal court. The king of Israel, hearing Naaman's request, "rent his clothes" (2 Kings 5:8); Elisha rebukes the gesture: "Why have you rent your clothes? Let him come now to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel" (2 Kings 5:8). Under the famine of Samaria's siege, when the king hears of the cannibal mother, "he rent his clothes (now he was passing by on the wall); and the people looked and saw that he had sackcloth inside on his flesh" (2 Kings 6:30). Athaliah, seeing Joash crowned, performs it as the gesture of a coup denounced: "Then Athaliah rent her clothes, and cried, Treason! Treason!" (2 Kings 11:14).

The Assyrian crisis under Hezekiah is bracketed by two rendings. After Rabshakeh's speech, Hezekiah's officers come to the king "with their clothes rent" (2 Kings 18:37; Isa 36:22), and the king himself responds in kind: "when King Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of Yahweh" (2 Kings 19:1; Isa 37:1).

Repentance and Self-Humbling

The same gesture turns inward when the news is one's own sin or one's own people's sin. Josiah, hearing the Book of the Law read after its rediscovery, "rent his clothes" (2 Kings 22:11; 2 Chr 34:19), and Yahweh marks the act as the sign of a pliable heart: "because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before Yahweh… and have rent your clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard you" (2 Kings 22:19). Even Ahab, after Elijah's oracle against his house, "rent his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly" (1 Kings 21:27).

Ezra's response to the news of mixed marriages in the returning community is among the most extended examples. First the act itself: "I rent my garment and my robe, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down confounded" (Ezra 9:3). Then, hours later, the rent garments are still on him as he prays: "at the evening oblation I arose up from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe rent; and I fell on my knees, and spread out my hands to Yahweh my God" (Ezra 9:5).

Rend Your Heart, Not Your Garments

Joel takes the familiar practice and refuses to settle for it. The prophet's call is a reorientation, not an abolition, of the gesture: "and rend your⁺ heart, and not your⁺ garments, and turn to Yahweh your⁺ God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness, and repents of the evil" (Joel 2:13). The outward rending could become a sham; what Yahweh asks for has the same violence and the same direction, but it is performed on the heart.

Figurative: A Kingdom Rent Away

The vocabulary also moves from cloth to political fact. As Samuel turns to leave Saul after the Amalek failure, "[Saul] laid hold on the skirt of his robe, and it rent" (1 Sam 15:27). Samuel reads the accidental tear as the oracle: "Yahweh has rent the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to your fellow man, who is better than you" (1 Sam 15:28). The gesture that elsewhere marks grief here marks the dissolution of a reign.

The Verdict in the High Priest's Hand

The Old Testament gesture comes back at Jesus' trial in Mark, performed not in grief but as a juridical sign. After the question about the Christ and the Son of the Blessed, the response is wordless before it is verbal: "And the high priest rent his clothes, and says, What further need do we have of witnesses?" (Mark 14:63). The same act that David made for Saul, that Hezekiah made for Jerusalem, that Ezra made for the people, is now made by the high priest as the seal of a charge of blasphemy.