Purple

Purple is the Bible's color of royalty, dignity, and costly splendor. True purple dye was extracted, drop by drop, from the murex sea-snail of the Phoenician coast, making it one of the most expensive substances in the ancient world — so rare that to wear purple was to display wealth and rank. Scripture takes up this everyday association and presses it into the service of two great themes: the glory of God's dwelling, and the kingship that finds its truest expression in Christ.

Purple first clothes the sanctuary. The tabernacle curtains and the veil are woven of "blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen" (Exodus 26:1; Exodus 26:31), and the high priest's ephod is made of the same royal colors (Exodus 28:5–6). The dwelling of God and the garments of the one who enters his presence are arrayed in the hues of a king — for the LORD is the great King, and his house befits his majesty.

Purple likewise marks human royalty and honor. The kings of Midian wore purple (Judges 8:26); Mordecai is led out in royal robes "of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a mantle of fine linen and purple" (Esther 8:15); and Lydia, Paul's first European convert, is "a seller of purple goods," a trader in this luxury (Acts 16:14). Yet purple can also drape a hollow or corrupt grandeur: the rich man who ignores Lazarus is "clothed in purple and fine linen" (Luke 16:19), and Babylon the harlot is "arrayed in purple and scarlet," the costume of a counterfeit, doomed magnificence (Revelation 17:4).

The color reaches its deepest meaning at the cross. Mocking Jesus' kingship, the soldiers dress him in a purple robe, press on a crown of thorns, and jeer, "Hail, King of the Jews!" (Mark 15:17–18; John 19:2–3). They mean it in scorn, but they speak more truly than they know: the man in the purple robe is the real King of kings, enthroned not on a dais but on a cross. So purple gathers up the Bible's vision of majesty — the splendor of God's sanctuary, the dignity of earthly rulers, the vanity of false glory, and, above all, the hidden royalty of the crucified Lord who reigns from the tree.