I N D E X
RAGS OR ROBES
11
RAGS OR ROBES
A sequel to
ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS
or
Crumbs from Israel's Table
Clothing in Scripture is often used as a symbol, and even in the things of everyday life, clothing often represents
something more than a mere covering of the body. Priests were clothed, not only with the distinctive clothing
prescribed by law, but with righteousness and with salvation. Others could be clothed with shame, with humility,
with cursing, and the Lord Himself be clothed with strength, with majesty, with honour, with garments of vengeance
and with zeal as a cloak, and few of us there are who have not read with gratitude and pleasure the words of Isaiah
61:10.
While all our teaching is based squarely upon the Word of God, it will not hurt us to remember that, the `Sage of
Chelsea', for example, wrote a whole philosophy of clothes under the title Sartor Resartus, where he says:
`You see two individuals, one dressed in fine Red, the other in coarse Blue: Red says to Blue "Be hanged and
anatomised"; Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders) marches sorrowfully to the gallows ... Your
Red hanging individual has a horse hair wig, with squirrel skins, and a plush gown; whereby all mortals know
that he is a JUDGE - Society ... is founded upon cloth'.
We remember `Jarge, a farm labourer who joined the police, exulting in the thought that when he was in uniform
he held up the Squire and his car, in the High Street'! And yet one more secular reference:
`The apparel oft proclaims the man' (Shakespeare).
Clothing is also called a `habit', and we remember a teacher once writing the word HABIT on the board, and
trying to get rid of it letter by letter, A BIT, BIT, IT, until only the T was left, the symbol of the cross. One has only to
read through such a book as the Revelation to note the continued use of clothing as a symbol. The opening
description of the Saviour's presence, Revelation 1:13-18 speaks not only of His head, His hair and His feet, but of
His garment and His girdle. Over and over again we read of white raiment, and white robes, and fine linen, of
defiled garments, of robes washed, of an angel clothed with a cloud, of witnesses clothed in sack cloth; of a woman
clothed with the sun, and a vesture dipped in blood. The earliest reference to clothing in the Scriptures is associated
with a sense of guilt and shame and the attempt, however frail and futile, to provide some sort of covering. Of both
Adam and Eve it is written:
`And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves
together, and made themselves aprons' (Gen. 3:7).
Over against this we read:
`Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them' (Gen. 3:21).
The Hebrew word asah occurs fifteen times in Genesis 1 to 3, but in the form known to grammarians as kal it
occurs seven times:
`And God made the firmament ... two great lights ... beast ... man ... an help meet'. Adam and Eve `made ...
aprons ... God made coats of skins' (Gen. 1:7,16,25,26; 2:18; 3:7,21).
God finished His work of creation and rested, but, sin entering into the world, His first act was to provide a
covering for sin by sacrifice, and so from Genesis 3 a new work begins which was not finished until the death of the
cross (John 4:34; 5:36; 17:4; 19:30). The seventh reference to anything that God made started the great unfolding
by type and shadow of redeeming love. The oldest comment on Genesis 3:7 is found in the book of Job: