Jewish Clothing in the Time of Jesus, Over 2,000 Years Ago | Biblical Documentary

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[00:00:00]The garments that covered the body of Jesus of Nazareth were not simple fabrics sewn by human hands. They were the result of centuries of tradition, of divine commandments engraved in stone and repeated from generation to generation, of a culture that understood that clothing was not only protection against the cold or decoration for the eyes, but a declaration of identity, of belonging, of covenant with the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. When Jesus walked through the dusty streets of Galilee, when he stopped at the shores of the Lake of Tiberias to call his disciples, when he entered the Temple of Jerusalem in the midst of the crowd during the great feasts, every garment he wore on his body spoke a language that every Israelite of the first century understood immediately, a language woven with threads of sacred history, of obedience to the Torah, and of an identity that no empire could take away.

[00:00:59]Understanding those garments is understanding something profound about the world in which the Son of God chose to incarnate, about the culture that he fully assumed as his own, about the humanity that he embraced without reservation to redeem it from within.

[00:01:16]The world of the Eastern Mediterranean in the first century was a universe of textures, colors, and symbols that spoke before any person opened their mouth.

[00:01:26]Roman Palestine, that strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, was a crossroads of civilizations where the millennial Hebrew tradition coexisted with the Hellenistic influence that Alexander the Great had spread throughout the East two centuries earlier, and the omnipresent power of Rome that manifested itself in soldiers, in taxes, and in the architecture of the cities. In that complex and sometimes violent world, the Jews of the first century found in their way of dressing one of the most visible expressions of their difference, of that sacred separation that the Lord had ordered since the times of Moses.

[00:02:08]Clothing was a living border, a daily declaration that this people belonged to another king, that their laws came from another place, that their destiny was written in a book that no Caesar had dictated. To understand the clothes that Jesus and his contemporaries wore, it is necessary to go back to the pages [music] of the Pentateuch, to those commandments that the Lord delivered to Moses [music] in the desert, and that shaped every aspect of the daily life of Israel. In the Book of Numbers, chapter 15, verses 38 to 40, we find one of the instructions [music] most directly related to the clothing that the people of God should wear. Speak to the children of Israel and tell them to make fringes on the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and to put on each fringe of the borders a thread of blue. And it shall be a fringe for you, so that when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord to do them, and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you prostitute yourselves, so that you will remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God.

[00:03:20]These words were not suggestions or spiritual recommendations that each Israelite could take or leave according to their convenience. They were divine commandments that defined the identity of the chosen people, literal reminders sewn on the edge of every garment, visible with every step the believer took upon the earth. The thread of blue mentioned in that passage, known in Hebrew as tekhelet, [music] was one of the most sacred and most expensive elements of Jewish clothing in the period of the Second Temple. Its color came from a dye extracted from a marine mollusk called Murex trunculus, a tremendously complex production process that made this particular blue one of the most expensive colors in the ancient world. The scarcity of the tekhelet gave it an additional spiritual meaning. That blue thread that adorned the fringes of the garments was a reminder of heaven, of the throne of God, of the revelation at Sinai, where the ground under the feet of the 70 elders who saw God was like sapphire in its clarity, according to Exodus 24.

[00:04:30]Wearing that blue thread was wearing a piece of heaven sewn into the clothing, a gesture of humility and reverence that said in silence that the wearer recognized the sovereignty of the one who dwells on high. During the period of the Temple, practically all observant Jews wore this thread in their tzitzit, the ritual fringes that hung from the corners of their garments. But with the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 of our era and the subsequent dispersion of the people, the knowledge of the correct mollusk was lost for centuries, and the fringes were made only with white thread. [music] The most fundamental garment in the wardrobe of a first century Jew was the inner tunic, called in Hebrew kutonet, in Aramaic kutuna, and in Greek chiton.

[00:05:16]This garment was essentially a rectangular piece of fabric folded in half or sewn on the sides with an opening for the head and generally sleeves that could be short to the elbow or long to the wrist. In the land of Israel of the first century, this tunic was made mainly with linen, a fiber produced locally from the flax plant >> [music] >> that grew especially in the region of Galilee, or with wool, which was also abundant in a land of shepherds. Linen was appreciated for its freshness in the months of intense heat, while wool offered greater warmth during the humid and cold winters of the mountainous region of Judea and the plateau of Galilee. The quality of the tunic [music] varied enormously according to the economic position of the wearer. The tunics of the poor were thick and unadorned garments of coarse linen or undyed wool, while those of the rich could be of fine linen, even imported from Egypt, dyed with expensive colors, and decorated with colored stripes called clavi that ran vertically from the shoulder to the hem. Precisely this tunic is the one mentioned in one of the most heartbreaking moments of the entire Gospel narrative, in the account of the crucifixion of Jesus.

[00:06:31]The Gospel of John, in its chapter 19, verses 23 and 24, gives us an extraordinary detail that speaks both of the quality of Jesus' garments and of the prophetic fulfillment that was unfolding in every moment of that day.

[00:06:48]When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and made four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic, which was without seam, woven from the top throughout.

[00:07:02]Then they said among themselves, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be."

[00:07:10]This was so that the scripture might be fulfilled, which says, "They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." The seamless tunic of Jesus was a garment of notable quality.

[00:07:24]In the textile world of the first century, a tunic woven in a single piece, without the need for side seams, required a level of artisanal skill considerably superior to that of an ordinary tunic. And it was a garment that was associated with priestly vestments, with the most sacred of service in the Temple. That Jesus wore such a garment at the moment of his passion adds a layer of theological meaning that the evangelist John does not let pass unnoticed. The eternal high priest went to the sacrifice dressed in a garment that evoked the holiness of the Temple over the inner tunic. Both men and women in first century Palestine wore a wider outer garment known in Hebrew as simla and in Greek as himation. This was the garment that in Spanish is frequently translated as cloak or mantle, and it was of enormous social and practical importance in the culture of the time. The himation was a large piece of fabric, generally rectangular, that was wrapped around the body in various ways according to the region and the occasion. Unlike the inner tunic, which could be a relatively intimate garment, it was the public garment par excellence, the one the wearer displayed in the market, in the synagogue, on the road.

[00:08:44]For people of lesser economic resources, this outer mantle also fulfilled the function of nighttime covering, a reality so everyday that the law of Moses itself contemplated it with special sensitivity.

[00:08:58]In Exodus 22, verses 26 to 27, the Lord ordered, "If you take your neighbor's garment in pledge, you shall restore it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering.

[00:09:14]It is his garment for his body. In what shall he sleep?

[00:09:18]And when he cries to me, I will hear, for I am merciful." This commandment reveals how much of the real life of the poor in ancient Israel depended on that outer garment, which sometimes was the only thing they had between them and the cold of the night. The mantle or himation was also the setting of one of the most moving miracles recorded in the Gospels, one that tells us something extraordinary about faith and about the person of Jesus.

[00:09:46]In Mark, chapter 5, verses 25 to 34, we find the story of the woman who had suffered from a flow of blood for 12 years, who had spent all she had on physicians without finding relief, and who in an act of desperate and pure faith made her way through the crowd surrounding Jesus and touched the border of his mantle. Because she said, "If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole." And immediately the source of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. What that woman touched was very probably one of the tzitzit, the ritual fringes that hung from the corners of Jesus' mantle. Those same fringes that the law of Numbers ordered to wear as a reminder of the commandments of God. That healing came precisely by touching that element so loaded with spiritual meaning does not seem to be a narrative coincidence, but a profound theological affirmation. In Jesus, everything the law promised was fully fulfilled, and obedience to the divine commandments was not a burden, but the wrapping of grace, the tzitzit.

[00:11:01]Those ritual fringes that Jesus as an observant Jew wore on the corners of his mantle were one of the most visible and most meaningful elements in first-century Jewish clothing. The Hebrew word tzitzit comes from a root that means to bloom or to stand out, and it described perfectly the image of those tufts of thread that protruded from each corner of the mantle, moving with every step of the wearer like a living reminder of the presence and commandments of the Lord. There were in Jerusalem and throughout the land of Israel artisans specialized in the making of these fringes, for making them correctly required knowing the oral traditions transmitted by the rabbis about the number of knots, the length of the threads, the correct way to wind them.

[00:11:48]The Pharisees, so obsessed with the outward observance of the law, tended to make their tzitzit longer and more showy than those of the common person, a habit that Jesus criticized with his usual frankness. In Matthew chapter 23, verse 5, we read, "But all their works they do to be seen by men. For they make broad their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments." This criticism of Jesus reveals something important.

[00:12:18]It was not the practice of wearing the fringes that he questioned, for he himself wore them as a faithful Jew, but the perversion of a sacred practice turned into an instrument of religious ostentation, the transformation of a symbol of humility before God into a tool of pride before men.

[00:12:36]The phylacteries mentioned in that same verse of Matthew, known in Hebrew as tefillin, were another [clears throat] fundamental element of first-century Jewish male piety. Although technically they were not part of the clothing in the strict sense, but rather liturgical accessories of daily use for observant adult men. The tefillin consisted of two small black leather boxes, perfectly square, that contained inside small parchments with four passages from the Torah, Exodus 13, verses 1 to 10 and 11 to 16, Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 to 9, and Deuteronomy 11, verses 13 to 21.

[00:13:20]One of the tefillin was tied by long black leather straps on the left arm, with the box resting on the biceps muscle oriented toward the heart, and the straps wound seven times around the forearm, the hand and the fingers forming letters of the name of God. The other tefillin was placed on the forehead with the box centered between the eyes, in literal fulfillment of Deuteronomy 6, verse 8, "And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes." The practice of wearing the tefillin during morning prayer was observed by the pious Jews of the first century as a way to literally consecrate thought and action to God, to say with one's own body that every mind and every hand were put at the service of the Lord. The belt or sash was another indispensable element in first-century Jewish dress and fulfilled both practical and symbolic functions that the modern reader might overlook if he does not stop to consider the world in which those men and women lived. In Hebrew, this belt was called ezor or chagor and could be made of very diverse materials according to the social position of the wearer.

[00:14:40]Raw leather for the poorest and for warriors, worked and decorated leather for the middle classes, and fine linen or even imported silk for the wealthiest. The belt served to gird the loose tunics around the waist, which allowed the wearer to move with greater freedom and agility, especially when work or travel required it.

[00:15:01]The expression "gird up the loins," which appears repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, referred precisely to this action of gathering the loose tunics and girding them with the belt to be able to walk quickly or work without the clothes hindering. In the spiritual context, this image became a powerful metaphor of preparation, of readiness for action, of alertness to what God was about to do. When the Lord ordered the Israelites to eat the Passover [music] standing with their loins girded in Exodus 12, verse 11, he was using the language of clothing to communicate a spiritual attitude, to be ready, attentive, without clinging to what was left behind. The footwear that Jesus and his contemporaries used also deserves special attention because it appears in the Gospels at moments of profound theological meaning. The typical sandal of first-century Palestine was a sole of leather or wood tied to the foot by leather straps that passed between the toes and surrounded the ankle in various ways. It was a simple and practical footwear designed for the dusty streets and stone roads of the land of Israel, and it was what practically all the inhabitants of the region, rich and poor, used daily. Sandals marked an important difference between the wearer and whoever went barefoot. Barefoot was a sign of extreme poverty or of a deliberate act of humility before the sacred presence, as when God ordered Moses to take off his sandals before the burning bush because the ground where he stood holy ground. Untying the sandal of another person was in the culture of the first century one of the most humble acts of service that a disciple could perform for his master. So humble that it was even considered below the dignity of a Jewish disciple toward his rabbi, being that task reserved for slaves.

[00:17:04]That is why when John the Baptist declared in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 27, "This is he who comes after me, the one who is before me, of whom I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal." He was using the language of the most servile service to express the infinite distance he felt between himself and the Messiah whose way he was preparing. The headdress or head covering was an element differentiated according to gender, the social situation, and the occasion in first-century Palestine. Jewish men of the period did not wear the kippah, that small round cap that has become the universal symbol of traditional Judaism, because this element became widespread in later periods of Jewish history.

[00:17:51]In the time of Jesus, men used various ways to cover their heads, especially during prayer or in situations of mourning, using the edge of the mantle or cloths of various forms. The linen turban was known and used especially by the priests during the service in the temple as part of the priestly garments detailed in Exodus 28. [music] For women, covering the head in public was practically universal in first-century Jewish culture, a sign of modesty and social respectability that differentiated them from women of other Mediterranean cultures who wore their hair uncovered. A married woman who appeared in public with her head uncovered in the Jerusalem of the first century would be violating a social norm so fundamental that it could be grounds for separation or public dishonor. This explains in part the enormous emotional weight of the gesture of the sinful woman who in Luke chapter 7, verses 37 to 38, approached Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee and poured perfume on his feet, wiped his feet with her hair.

[00:18:59]Letting down her hair in a public space was a gesture of total abandonment of reputation, a complete surrender before the one she recognized as her Lord. The colors of the garments in the Jewish world of the first century had their own language that the contemporaries of Jesus read with the same naturalness with which we today read a written text.

[00:19:21]White was the color of ritual purity, of holiness, and of sacred occasions.

[00:19:28]And the priests who served in the temple wore white linen garments during most of their functions. The dying of fabrics was an important industry in the cities of Roman Palestine, and there were entire neighborhoods in Jerusalem dedicated to this [music] trade with their artisans specialized in the different processes of extraction and application of natural dyes from plants, minerals, and animals. red and scarlet were obtained from the worm called in Hebrew tolat shani and were colors of considerable cost. Blue and purple, the tekhelet and argaman of the Hebrew texts, were the most expensive of all because they required working with marine mollusks difficult to obtain.

[00:20:12]This scale of colors made clothing also a visible economic map.

[00:20:16]Whoever dressed in purple and fine linen, like the rich man in the parable of Lazarus in Luke 16, was displaying a wealth that in the ancient world was only within reach of the very powerful.

[00:20:29]That Jesus told a parable about someone who dressed in purple and then placed him in the torment of the hereafter facing the poor beggar who rested in the bosom of Abraham was a perfectly understandable message for any first century listener about the inversion of values that the kingdom of God brings with it. The priestly garments deserve a separate chapter in any study of Jewish clothing in the time of Jesus because they constituted their own universe of symbolic meaning and of divine command.

[00:21:00]The high priest, the kohen gadol, wore eight garments that were meticulously described in Exodus [music] 28 and 29 and that were made by artisans specially designated for that task. People whom tradition considered endowed by God with a particular talent for that sacred work.

[00:21:19]Over an inner tunic of white linen and breeches also of linen, the high priest wore a completely seamless blue tunic with small pomegranates of colored thread and golden bells alternating on its hem so that when the holy priest moved through the holy place, the soft sound of those bells could be heard. Over that blue tunic he wore the ephod, a sleeveless tunic woven with thread of gold, blue, purple and scarlet supported on the shoulders by two onyx stones set in gold on which were engraved the names [music] of the 12 tribes of Israel, six names on each stone.

[00:22:00]Over the chest of the ephod was fastened the breastplate of judgment, a square piece folded that contained 12 precious stones also with the names of the 12 tribes and inside of which were kept the Urim and Thummim, the mysterious objects through which God communicated his will in situations of national uncertainty.

[00:22:22]Everything in the high priest's clothing was a reminder that this man did not act in his own name but as a representative of the entire people before God carrying on his shoulders and on his chest the names of all the children of Israel. In that temple where the high priest exercised his functions dressed in all that sacred glory, Jesus arrived on several occasions during his public ministry. The Gospel of Luke tells us that when Jesus was presented in the temple at 40 days of his birth in fulfillment of the law of Moses for the purification of the mother and the presentation of the firstborn according to Exodus 13 and Leviticus 12, the elder Simeon took him in his arms and pronounced that hymn that the church has called the Nunc Dimittis in that encounter.

[00:23:11]The child Jesus wrapped in the swaddling clothes of the newborn was recognized by a man full of the Holy Spirit as the light of the nations and the glory of Israel, >> [music] >> a powerful visual paradox.

[00:23:25]The one who would be the eternal high priest, the one who would offer the definitive sacrifice, was wrapped in the simplest and humblest clothes that a human being can wear.

[00:23:37]This humility of the incarnation, the theologians call kenosis following Paul in Philippians chapter 2 verses 6 to 8, found in the garments a visible symbol.

[00:23:49]The one who in eternity is clothed with light as with a garment as the Psalm 104 verse 2 sings, chose to clothe himself with humility to be able to meet humanity in its real condition. Mourning clothes in first century Jewish culture were another element of great meaning that appears in the background of several gospel episodes. When someone died, the mourning family members tore their garments as a sign of pain, a gesture that in Hebrew was called keriah and that was described in numerous passages of the Old Testament. From the lament of Jacob for Joseph in Genesis 37 to the mourning of David for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1, the tearing of clothing was a bodily language that externalized inner pain that said with the body what words could not fully express.

[00:24:42]Along with the tearing of garments, the mourner could dress in sackcloth, a rough and shapeless fabric woven with goat or camel hair that in Hebrew was called sack and that was the opposite of all festive clothing.

[00:24:58]If festive clothing was colorful, fine and elaborate, the sackcloth was monochromatic, coarse and unadorned. Covering oneself with sackcloth was also a practice of penitence and intercession, a way to tell God with one's own body that the wearer recognized his unworthiness and cried out for mercy. The fact that Jesus, when lamenting the hardness of heart of Chorazin and Bethsaida in Matthew chapter 11 verse 21, said that if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, these cities would have repented long ago [music] in sackcloth and ashes, reveals how integrated these bodily gestures were in the spiritual language that his listeners understood instinctively. White clothing as an eschatological and spiritual symbol runs through the New Testament with a consistency that becomes impossible to ignore when one pays attention. In the transfiguration of Jesus narrated in the three synoptic gospels, the visible transformation that the disciples contemplated on the mountain had as one of its most striking elements precisely the change in Jesus' garments. Matthew chapter 17 verse 2 says, "And he was transfigured before them and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as the light." Mark chapter 9 verse 3 adds the significant detail, "And his clothes became shining, exceedingly white as snow so that no launderer on earth can make them so white."

[00:26:31]This comment of Mark about the launderers is not a picturesque detail but a theological affirmation. The whiteness of Jesus' garments in the transfiguration was not achievable by any human cleaning process. It was a whiteness that came from inside out, a revelation of the divine glory that dwelt in that human body just as the tabernacle of Israel had contained the Shekinah, the glorious presence of the Lord within its curtains of fabric. In the transfiguration, Jesus' garments stopped hiding his glory and began to reveal it as if the fabric itself had become impregnated with what dwelt within. Those who washed clothes in first century Palestine formed a particular guild in the social structure of cities and villages. The washing of clothes was hard work, physically demanding and socially little valued, carried out mainly on the outskirts of cities near water sources and stone basins where the clothes were beaten, rubbed with ash or with vegetable soap and rinsed repeatedly. In Jerusalem, there was a specific area outside the walls where the fullers carried out their work and the biblical reference to the fullers' gate in Nehemiah indicates that this trade had enough importance in the urban economy to have its own access to the city. The clothes of common people were washed with much less frequency than the modern reader might imagine, not out of carelessness but simply because water was not always abundant. The work of washing was arduous and people had few garments to alternate while some were washed and dried. This reality makes the radiant white of Jesus' garments in the transfiguration even more extraordinary in the perception of his Galilean disciples. They had never seen anything so white in their entire lives because no human process could produce that luminosity. The textile industry in Galilee in the time of Jesus was one of the pillars of the regional economy and this tells us something important about [music] the environment in which Jesus grew up and developed his ministry. The region of Galilee was known in the ancient world for the quality of its linen production and the city of Magdala on the shores of the Lake of Tiberias was a significant center of textile production and trade. Domestic looms were part of the basic equipment of almost all households in the region.

[00:29:00]Spinning and weaving was one of the most socially valued female activities in the entire ancient Mediterranean world. The Book of Proverbs chapter 31 in its poem about the virtuous woman devotes several verses to highlighting her textile skills.

[00:29:18]"She seeks wool and flax and works willingly with her hands. She makes linen garments and sells them and supplies sashes to the merchants."

[00:29:27]This image of the woman who spins, weaves and sells was not an abstract ideal but a description of the economic reality in which millions of Jewish families organized their lives. That the mother of Jesus, Mary, was an artisan of this type is not a far-fetched supposition but a reasonable inference from the cultural environment in which she lived. It was very likely that she herself wove the tunics of her son. The same ones that 30 years later would be cast lots for at the foot of a cross.

[00:30:00]The use of white garments for angels and for messengers of the divine is another element that runs through the biblical narrative with notable consistency and that its first-century readers would have recognized immediately. When the women arrived at the tomb on the first day of [music] the week and found that Jesus was not there, the angelic messengers they found were dressed in shining white.

[00:30:24]Luke chapter 24, verse four, and it came to pass as they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. The same language of garments as an indicator of the heavenly appears in the book of [music] Revelation, where the 24 elders are clothed in white robes, where the martyrs under the altar receive white robes, where the heavenly army that accompanies the glorified Christ in his coming goes dressed in clean white linen. In Revelation chapter 19, verse 14, John writes, "And the armies in heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses." This language of eschatological clothing was not an invention of the author of Revelation, but the projection toward the eternal future of a language that was already deeply rooted in the religious consciousness of the people of God. White garments meant purity, victory, divine presence, the glory that belongs to God and that he graciously shares with those who belong to him.

[00:31:34]In the book of Zechariah, one of the most extraordinary passages related to clothing as a spiritual symbol appears in chapter three, verses one to five.

[00:31:45]In the vision of the high priest Joshua before the angel of the Lord, the text narrates how Joshua was [music] clothed with filthy garments while the adversary accused him and how the angel of the Lord ordered that clean garments be put on him, saying in verse four, "See, I have taken away your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes." This image of the change of garments as a metaphor for justification, of forgiveness, and of restoration is one of the most powerful in all prophetic literature.

[00:32:18]It is no accident that Paul, when describing the salvation that the believer receives in Christ, uses repeatedly the language of clothing. In Romans chapter 13, verse 14, [music] he exhorts, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ."

[00:32:37]And in Colossians chapter three, verses 12 to 14, he describes the new life in Christ as the act of "Put on therefore >> [music] >> as the elect of God, holy and beloved, tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering."

[00:33:00]This theology of spiritual clothing that Paul develops has its deep roots in the world of physical garments that Jesus and his contemporaries knew from childhood. Clothing was identity.

[00:33:11]Clothing was belonging and putting on Christ was the most radical possible expression of a new identity. There is an episode in the Gospels in which the garments of Jesus become the focal point of an entire multitude, and that episode is the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday prior to Passover, which we remember as Palm Sunday. In Mark chapter 11, verses seven to eight, the evangelist describes the moment thus, "And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments on it, and he sat on it.

[00:33:47]Also many spread their garments on the road, and others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road."

[00:33:54]The gesture of spreading garments on the road before someone was in ancient culture an act of royal acclamation, a recognition of the dignity and authority of the one passing by. His contemporaries would have known the episode narrated in Second Kings chapter nine, verse 13, when the captains of the army of Israel spread their garments under the feet of Jehu when he was anointed king. By repeating that gesture with Jesus, the multitude was making a political and spiritual declaration that the religious leaders of Jerusalem understood perfectly and that filled them with alarm. They were acclaiming Jesus as king. They were using the language of garments to crown him with the honor that the law and the prophets promised to the Messiah of the line of David. The clothing of John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah, also deserves a detailed mention because it was in itself a powerful message that his contemporaries could read without need of explanation. Matthew chapter three, verse four tells us, "And John was clothed in camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey."

[00:35:06]This description is built with all precision to evoke another prophet of Israel, the greatest of the northern prophets, Elijah the Tishbite.

[00:35:17]In Second Kings chapter one, verse eight, when King Ahaziah asked what the messenger who had brought him a response from the Lord looked like, his servants answered, "He was a man with a garment of hair and girded with a leather belt around his waist." The identification was immediate. It is Elijah the Tishbite. That John the Baptist dressed exactly [music] like Elijah was a deliberate message. He was the prophet that the book of Malachi promised as forerunner [music] of the day of the Lord, the Elijah who would come before the great and terrible day of God.

[00:35:52]In Malachi chapter four, verse five, his way of dressing was a prophetic proclamation before he opened his mouth, a declaration of identity and mission written in camel's hair and leather. The garments of women in first-century Palestine followed the same fundamental [music] principles of male clothing, but with some important differences that reflected both the norms of modesty of Jewish culture and the specific needs of female domestic work. The Jewish woman of the first century wore an inner tunic similar to the male one, but generally longer, reaching to the ankles instead of to the knees, and over it a wider outer garment that covered her from the shoulders to the feet. Head covering was practically universal for married women and was a sign of respectable social [music] status. As we have already mentioned, women of greater economic resources could use fabrics of better quality and jewelry that completed their clothing ensemble.

[00:36:51]Earrings, necklaces, rings and bracelets were common adornments for women of the middle and upper class. The prophet Isaiah in his chapter three, verses 16 to 24, makes an extraordinarily detailed list of the feminine adornments of his time, which includes earrings, bracelets, veils, headdresses, sashes, perfumes and mirrors, a list that reveals how much emphasis the culture of the ancient Near East placed on feminine appearance.

[00:37:25]And that at the same time the prophet denounces [music] as a symbol of the vanity and superficiality of the elite of Jerusalem in his time. The women who followed Jesus during his ministry and whom the Gospel of Luke mentions in his [music] chapter eight, verses two and three, among them Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Chuza, Susanna and many others, were women who had sufficient resources to contribute to the economic support of the group of disciples from their own goods. Luke tells us that these women provided for him from their resources, an indication that they were not women without resources, but probably widows or women of certain economic independence who could dispose of their own money. Their presence with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, their permanence at the foot of the cross when most of the male disciples had fled, and their arrival at the tomb in the early morning of the first day of the week constitutes one of the most moving and most significant narratives of the Gospels. And in that narrative, clothing plays a symbolic role.

[00:38:32]They were the ones who brought the spices to anoint the body of Jesus, a practice of mortuary care that included wrapping the body in white linen cloths like the one Joseph of Arimathea bought to wrap the body of the Lord, according to Mark [music] chapter 15, verse 46.

[00:38:51]The shroud with which the body of Jesus was wrapped after his death on the cross is one of the elements of Jewish funerary clothing that has generated the most attention throughout the centuries.

[00:39:03]The Jewish burial practice in the time of Jesus included washing the body of the deceased, wrapping it in white linen cloths, and in some cases, covering the face with a separate shroud. The Gospel of John in its chapter [music] 20, verses six and seven, describes with an extraordinarily specific detail what Peter saw when he entered the empty tomb. "Then Simon Peter entered after him and saw the linen cloths lying there, and the shroud that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded in a place by itself." This detail of the shroud folded separately is not a literary adornment, but a fact that the author considers important. The tomb had not been looted.

[00:39:50]The arrangement of the cloths and the shroud showed an order that did not correspond to the haste of body thieves, but to the serene and powerful abandonment of one who simply no longer needed them. The resurrection of Jesus left behind the garments of death as a sign that death itself had been left behind, conquered, stripped of its power.

[00:40:12]The Book of Revelation, that extraordinary vision given to the Apostle John on the island of Patmos, is perhaps the text of the New Testament where the language of garments reaches its greatest theological density and its highest expression. White garments are in Revelation one of the great symbols of salvation, of the victory of the lamb, and of the identity of those who belong to him.

[00:40:37]In Revelation chapter 3 verses 4 [music] and 5, the glorified Christ says to the church of Sardis, "But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white garments because they are worthy. He who overcomes will be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life, and I will confess his name before my father and before his angels."

[00:41:04]And later, in Revelation chapter 7 verses 13 and 14, one of the 24 elders asks John about the great multitude clothed in white robes, and the answer is one of the most beautiful affirmations in all of scripture.

[00:41:21]"These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb." The theological paradox here is absolute and deliberate.

[00:41:32]Clothes become white by washing them in blood, which in the logic of the world is impossible, but which in the logic of the gospel is the central truth. The blood of Christ does not stain, but cleanses, does not darken, but illuminates, does not destroy, but restores the original whiteness of humanity created in the image of God.

[00:41:56]There is a moment in the gospels that connects in a direct way all the theology of garments with the everyday experience of the poorest among the listeners of Jesus, and that moment is the Sermon on the Mount.

[00:42:09]Specifically, in Matthew chapter 6 verses 25 to 34, where Jesus speaks of anxiety about clothing with a tenderness and an authority that can only come from one who really knows what poverty is.

[00:42:23]"Therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will wear.

[00:42:34]Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

[00:42:38]And then comes the comparison that has remained in human memory through 20 centuries.

[00:42:44]And why do you worry about clothing?

[00:42:47]Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

[00:42:50]They neither toil nor spin, but I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of them. And if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith?"

[00:43:09]That Jesus chose the glory of the garments of Solomon as a point of comparison is not accidental. [music] The garments of the most powerful king of Israel, that monarch who brought tons of gold and purple and silk fabrics into Jerusalem, according to 1 Kings chapter 10, were the symbol most immediately understandable of the maximum wealth that the ancient world could imagine.

[00:43:34]And yet, said Jesus with a smile that his listeners could almost hear, "A simple wild lily surpasses him in glory." The creator who clothes with such delicacy and beauty a flower that lasts only one day is not going to neglect the clothing of his children.

[00:43:52]The parable of the prodigal son that Jesus narrates in Luke chapter 15 verses 11 to 32, contains one of the most emotionally powerful moments of all his teaching.

[00:44:04]And that moment revolves around the garments. When the prodigal son returned home after having squandered his inheritance in a far country, after having lowered himself to feed pigs and having gone hungry among strangers, his father saw him from afar and ran to meet him.

[00:44:21]The text says in verse 22, "But the father said to his servants, 'Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet.'"

[00:44:33]The best robe, the first stole, as the original Greek says, in the world of the 1st century, that garment of honor was the visible sign of a complete restoration. It was not given to the returning son a decent work garment so that he could gradually earn his place again. It was given directly the most honorable garment of the house, a declaration that [music] his restoration was total, immediate and free, together with the ring, symbol of authority and belonging to the family, and the sandals that distinguished the free son from the barefoot slave. The robe of honor constituted a language of grace that all the listeners of Jesus understood without need of explanation.

[00:45:17]This son was completely restored, completely received, completely loved.

[00:45:23]This question that arises from the gospel and from the millennial tradition of Israel is also for you, who have come this far in this journey through the garments of the world of Jesus. What spiritual garment are you wearing at this moment in your life?

[00:45:38]Do you still wear the stained clothes that the adversary wants you to believe are yours forever?

[00:45:44]Or have you allowed the father to run toward you and clothe you with the best garment, with the stole of his mercy?

[00:45:51]Leave us your answer in the comments.

[00:45:53]Tell us what part of this journey through the garments of Jesus and his world spoke most directly to your heart.

[00:46:00]The story of the garments in the world of Jesus does not end in the 1st century. It continues in every life transformed by the gospel, in every believer who, as Paul says in Galatians chapter 3 verse 27, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." The language of clothing that began in Genesis, when God himself made tunics of skins to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 3 verse 21, reaches its culmination in the promise of Revelation, where the redeemed are clothed in fine linen, white and clean, which is the righteous acts of the saints, >> [music] >> according to Revelation chapter 19 verse 8. Between that first garment of skins and that final garment of glory, the entire history of salvation can be read as the story of a God who takes care of covering the nakedness of his creature, who insists on clothing with dignity those whom sin has stripped of all glory, who sends his own son to take upon himself our garments of misery so that we may receive his robe of righteousness. Isaiah chapter 61 verse 10 sang it with a joy that still resonates.

[00:47:18]"I will greatly rejoice [music] in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God.

[00:47:23]For he has clothed [music] me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

[00:47:30]As a bridegroom, he has adorned me." If this biblical documentary has enriched your understanding of the world of Jesus and has drawn your heart closer to the depth of the gospel, we invite you to share it with someone who needs this word today, to leave a comment with what the Lord spoke to your life, and to subscribe to the channel to continue this journey through the sacred history that gives meaning to everything we are and everything we hope for. May the God who clothes the lilies of the field with a glory that surpasses Solomon clothe you with the fullness of his grace. May the lamb who was slain and who lives forever and ever cover you with his mantle of mercy. And may the peace that surpasses all understanding guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.