The Old Testament high-priestly vestments
“But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet” (Luke 15:22)
In the view of Pavel Florensky, during earthly life a person's clothing is mysteriously connected with his soul: clothing is part of the body. And from the artistic point of view it sheds light on the body's structure.
After the Fall, Adam and Eve saw that they were naked (which meant that they had become unworthy of being clothed with the immaterial light given by God).
Through the Lord's incarnation man regained his first garment, that is, was deified. At the Transfiguration, together with the Lord's shining, His garments too became white: “And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them” (Mark 9:3). The material was transfigured into the immaterial. All this shows that the human body was not created naked, but was clothed with a garment fitting for the service of God. The visible image of the heavenly garment is the liturgical vestment. It possesses the power and grace of its prototype, the heavenly garment. All the garments used during divine service are called liturgical vestments. They come into being when the tabernacle is built, when the foundation of the liturgy is laid. Then the Lord commands Moses: “And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty.” Aaron represented at once both the Messiah and Israel (Exod. 28:2), and of course his vestment was bound to be charged with symbols of the Messiah. And without it (the vestment — N. G.) the high priest could not enter the Holy of Holies (he would certainly have perished). But this was not yet true deification: only the Saviour's crucifixion was followed by man's return to the bosom of the Father, and those baptised in His name put on Christ.
Historically, liturgical vestments appear from the 6th century. There are, however, traditions describing the vestments of the apostles.
It is also known that the first vestments were white, as a sign of being clothed with divine light. Later, in the 7th and 8th centuries, vestments of other colours are found in the Church: crimson, blue, green. Black vestments were adopted, as a rule, as a sign of mourning in Great Lent from the 5th century. A large part of the vestments of a New Testament bishop has its origin in the vestments of Aaron.
Here are the garments that were to be made for the high priest Aaron: “a breastplate, and an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, a mitre, and a girdle” (Exod. 28:4). Of these garments only the coat, the headdress and the girdle were worn by Aaron's sons. To make the vestments, wise and skilful people were to be chosen.
The ephod means “binding”; it consisted of two pieces of cloth, one covering the back and the other the breast down to the waist. At the shoulders these two pieces were fastened with a strap, and at the waist a girdle was tied round them. The cloth itself was to be of blue, purple and scarlet linen with gold thread added. On the shoulder-pieces of the ephod were fixed two onyx stones set in gold, bearing the names of the patriarchs, six on one side and six on the other, so that the high priest should not forget the people during prayer. Here is what Gregory of Nyssa says: “The blue woven with the purple means that the Kingdom is joined to purity of life; and the scarlet joined with the fine linen signifies that purity and beauty of deeds are blended with the brightness of restraint and ascetic struggle. And the mixing of gold with all these proclaims the treasure laid up for such a way of life.” [Sulkhan-Saba explains byssus thus: “This is a kind of green herb; a garment dyed with it is called byssus. The colour of byssus is the colour of glowing embers. The name is given to the finest cloth, made from linen with great skill; it is a royal and high-priestly vestment.”] It is a precious garment; in the Revelation we read: “And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints” (Rev. 19:8); porphyry and byssus are the colour of blood. As the garment of kings and high priests, it signifies that they should shed their blood as Christ did for the people.
Blue, purple and scarlet recur continually in the vestments. Here it cannot go unremarked that the colours of the Saviour's clothing are mainly purple and blue, that is, He is clothed in a blue tunic and a purple cloak. And the stones on which the names of the patriarchs of Israel were engraved may have signified the new Israel, which the Saviour bears on His shoulders, as Aaron bore the sins of his people.
In the same colours was made the breastplate of judgement — [the oracle of the law]. It had the form of a square pouch, which was fastened to the ephod by gold rings. On it were fixed twelve stones set in gold, three by three in four rows, with the names of the patriarchs. Row I: sardius, topaz, emerald; row II: turquoise, sapphire, jasper; row III: jacinth, agate, amethyst; row IV: chrysolite, onyx, beryl.
It is called the breastplate because the high priest wore it on his breast. It was precisely on his breast that he was to bear the names of the 12 tribes of Israel, so as always to remember them before God. The high priest, as the judge of his people, was to have “an understanding and wise heart.” And it is called the oracle of judgement because in it lay the Urim and Thummim — revelation and truth. Light and truth: that is what these objects are called. [The German commentator Otto Gerlach compares these objects with the pendant of a judge in Egypt bearing an image of truth (a closed eye), which bore the name of truth.] By means of the Urim the high priest inquired of the Lord and communicated with Him. According to Josephus, the whole breastplate was called Urim and Thummim. By his account, too, the precious stones began to flash if the Hebrews received a favourable answer from God.
There is a view that the will of God expressed through the Urim and Thummim was revealed by a voice. Perhaps the high priest concentrated his attention precisely on the stones, and at that moment was given the grace of prophecy. According to the teaching of the rabbis, the stones of the breastplate had the values of letters, so that whole words were formed. The Kabbalists and Talmudists think that the high priest fixed his attention on the word “Yahweh,” which was written on the breastplate, and received the grace of prophecy while meditating on and contemplating it. Rabbi Ariel (Levin) explains that in the breastplate lay a papyrus bearing the 72 names of God, and when the high priest concentrated on it, God's answer was written by the flashing of the stones.
[In Michaelis's view, however, three papyri lay in the breastplate: on one a favourable answer was written, on another an unfavourable one, and the third was blank, which expressed silence. There is also the view that the Urim and Thummim were diamond dice, which the high priest threw when entering the Holy of Holies, and received his answer in this way.]
It is noteworthy that, as we noted above, these objects are also called light, truth and righteousness, which are epithets of the Saviour. By means of them the high priest communicated with God; hence we may suppose that symbolically they represented the Saviour. The Urim and Thummim placed in the breastplate remind us of the objects kept in the ark of the covenant, which are likewise symbolically connected with the Saviour. And finally, the (renewed) union of mankind with God came about through the Saviour's incarnation. Thus we may suppose that this element of the Old Testament vestments is a symbol of the Messiah.
The Lord continues and commands Moses: “And thou shalt make the robe of the ephod all of blue. And there shall be an hole in the top of it, in the midst thereof: it shall have a binding of woven work round about the hole of it, as it were the hole of an habergeon, that it be not rent” [Exod. 28:31–32]. According to tradition, it was a seamless garment, like the Saviour's tunic (“now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout,” John 19:23). Aaron's robe had pomegranates embroidered all round its hem in threads of the same colours (meaning purple, blue and scarlet). Between the pomegranates hung golden bells, “and his sound shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord, and when he cometh out, that he die not” [Exod. 28:35]. Gregory of Nyssa teaches us: “So let our faith too sound out holy and loud, like golden bells, in the preaching of the Holy Trinity, and let our life be likened to the nature of the pomegranate: for its outer part cannot be eaten, being hard and shut in a bitter rind, but inside it is good to eat, for it pleasantly sweetens the palate; so too the divine way of life is hard and tasteless outwardly to these visible senses, while what is within it is hidden. So that it may be shown, when the Husbandman of all opens the pomegranate of this life in its time, that it is full of that sweetness and hope of good things. For when the Husbandman of all opens the pomegranate of this life in its time and reveals the beauty within it, then it will become sweet in his mouth…” (“The Life of Moses”).
One of the most important details of the vestments was the headdress bearing the name of God. “And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD.” This headdress is called the mitre (kidaris). It was sewn from byssus (fine white cloth). According to Jewish teaching, this fine cloth was wound round the head like a turban. Josephus calls it the tiara; around this cloth ran a triple crown of gold with little golden flowers. It must be noted here that Josephus follows and describes the traditions that existed in his time (in the last years of the Temple's existence), so his information cannot give us an exact picture. Closer to the biblical text is the teaching of the rabbis on the “kidaris”: in their description, the headdress was to be pure (white), with a polished plate of gold fastened to the cloth with a blue cord, and on the gold plate were engraved the words “Holiness to the Lord.”
Beneath the vestments the high priest wore the tunic — [ketonet]. It had sleeves; according to Lopukhin's interpretation, it was sewn from byssus, with a chequered pattern running through the cloth. The tunic was girded with a girdle.
The girdle too was made of byssus, decorated with blue, purple and scarlet patterns. To cover the nakedness of the flesh, the minister of God had to wear linen undergarments. For Aaron's sons the Lord appointed as vestments only the tunic, the girdle and the cap.
According to Jewish tradition, the high priest was to put on these vestments only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. On this day he entered the Holy of Holies.
According to Jewish tradition, the most important part of the vestments was still the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim [light and perfection] — of which we have no exact idea. After the Babylonian captivity the Urim and Thummim are no longer seen. We find only the prophecy [1 Ezra 2:63]: “And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and with Thummim.” This high priest with the Urim and Thummim is Jesus Christ. If in general the high priest of the Old Testament was a prototype of Jesus Christ, then all the more so the high priest with the Urim and Thummim, in whom He is represented not only as High Priest, Redeemer and Merciful One, but also as the heavenly Teacher and Enlightener; Christ is the true High Priest, who brought us the perfect revelation of God's will. He is the Truth and the Light. After the Temple was destroyed, sacrifices were no longer offered, and so the vestments went out of use (more than that, they were forbidden).
Today in the synagogue the tallit is worn for prayer; according to Rabbi Ariel, it is older than the vestments of Aaron. Finally, let us add that the “tallit” was also used by the first Christians in the communities of Jerusalem.
Nino Gvelesiani, fifth-year student of the Faculty of Christian Art
