The Secret Codes in Matthew: Examining Israel’s Messiah, Part 9: Matthew 13-14, by Kevin M. Williams
This “fringe” relates directly back to the Torah:
“Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue” (Numbers 15:38).
To refer to them as “fringes” in the New Testament, but “tassels” in the Hebrew Scriptures (as the NASB and NIV do) lacks continuity. This tends to separate Yeshua’s “fringes” from their biblical origin, yet they are one in the same. These fringes are basically the same today as they were 2,000 years ago, readily visible on all Orthodox Jewish men. In the Hebrew world, they are called tzit-tzit.
Many verses in the Bible are only words and letters until we come to Israel. I was very moved when I saw a fringe found in Qumran that was 2,000 years old with exactly the same shape as those which are put on today. It has not changed in at least two thousand years. So we know that when the woman who was sick (Matt 9:20) approached Jesus from behind in order to catch the fringe of His garment, the tassel looked precisely the same way. Then I see again the connection between the Old and New Testament. Our Lord Jesus Christ was wearing this and in doing so he was obedient to all the commandments of the Torah.7
For the last two millennia, the tzit-tzit worn among the Orthodoxy have been made of all white threads, with the “blue” thread absent. This is because that thread is not what we might consider a common blue, but a unique aquamarine blue called techelet. This techelet color was derived from a particular snail which until recently was believed to be extinct. No other blue could be a proper substitute.
Some would ask why a religious item like the techelet could be made from a biblically unkosher, or unclean animal. According to the director of Begid-Ivri, the institute responsible for rediscovering the techelet color as well as many other articles for the re-instituted Levitical priesthood, “God commanded that we cannot eat unclean animals, but He does not prohibit us from using them.”8
This is born out in many other aspects of Torah life. For instance, the people of Israel can freely use an unclean donkey, though they would not consider it food. The covering of the Tabernacle, the tachish skin, was made from an unkosher creature. The scarlet thread or shani was produced from the tolat shani (“crimson worm,” or Armenian Conchial). Clearly the prohibition is from eating unkosher animals but they are acceptable to use as a resource.
There is some conjecture about the blue and white, and what these colors might symbolize. Author C.W. Slemming, in his book These Are the Garments, likens the blue thread to grace and the white threads to the Torah. As you can see from the illustration above, the blue is interwoven throughout the white. Even though there are times the blue (grace) completely embraces the white (the Torah) we know the white threads still exist.
The corners referenced in Numbers 15:38 are somewhat difficult to imagine in our modern fashions. Biblical garb was different. In this case it might be better thought of as a poncho—a large rectangle with a hole in the middle for the head allowing one half of the rectangle to hang in front as the other half hangs over the posterior.
Category: Biblical Studies, Pneuma Review, Spring 2003
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