Exodus 27:20 – 30:10
Glorious Splendor
This week’s Torah reading describes the special garments to be worn by the kohanim (priests) in the Temple. Those garments were no minor detail. In ancient Israel, clothes made the kohen; kohanim couldn’t serve in the Temple without their special priestly garments, and the very sight of them seems to have inspired an awe that modern readers have difficulty imagining. The anonymous author of the Letter of Aristeas (written in Greek by a Jew, probably sometime in the second century BCE) described the effect of seeing those garments:
[The priests’] appearance makes one awestruck and dumbfounded. I emphatically assert that anyone who comes near the spectacle of what I have described will experience astonishment and amazement beyond words, his very being transformed by the hallowed arrangement of every single detail.
On the same theme, the Jewish sage Ben Sira (early second century BCE) said that Aaron’s priestly clothing possessed a “glorious splendor and stunning appearance, a delight to the eyes, the very height of beauty. Before his time there never were such things.” Somewhat later (first century CE), Philo of Alexandria said the high priest’s clothing “seems to be a likeness and copy of the universe.”
But the fame of the priestly garments raised a question for ancient interpreters. The Torah reports that Israel’s ancestors sometimes acted as kohanim, offering sacrifices to God: Noah, Abraham, and Isaac were explicitly said to have done so. In fact, tradition has it that these figures were part of an unbroken chain of priests stretching back to the beginning of history. But the Torah says nothing about them wearing any special clothing. How could they have served as priests without the priestly uniform?
According to an ancient tradition, the very first priest in history was also the very first human being, Adam. After all, he inhabited a mikdash (sanctuary), the Garden of Eden. (A “sanctuary” is, in the biblical sense, a place where God is physically present, and the Garden of Eden was certainly that: Adam and Eve are said to have heard “the sound of the Lord God walking about in the Garden,” Gen 3:8.) So naturally, Adam ought to have offered a sacrifice to God right there in the Garden.
There was only one problem: Adam didn’t have any clothes (Gen 3:7). A priest had to be clothed for reasons of modesty (Exod 20:23), and although Adam and Eve were said to have had some sort of translucent covering, “clothes of glory,” these were apparently not sufficient to allow Adam to serve as a priest. However, just before their expulsion from Eden, the pair were given some clothes: God made “garments of skin” for Adam and Eve to wear (Gen 3:21). Obviously, these garments were no ordinary clothing; God Himself had made them! And since they were what the Torah calls “tunics,” the same word used in this week’s reading in describing the priestly garments (Exod 28:4), the conclusion was obvious: God had equipped Adam with the first priestly garments in history. That’s why, once Adam had been given this sacred clothing, he is said to have prepared a sweet-smelling sacrifice of frankincense and other spices, the first priestly offering. (As a vegetarian, Adam could not offer an animal sacrifice.)
From there the priestly clothes were passed on from one generation to the next: according to ancient midrash, a series of firstborn males who acted as that generation’s kohen. After Adam, the priestly garments were passed on to Enoch, then from Enoch to Noah, Noah to Shem, and so on, until Jacob’s son Levi was chosen to inherit the priesthood. At that point, Levi’s descendants became the exclusive priestly tribe, and still later a single line in that family, Aaron’s, became the only hereditary priests, until this very day.
No one knows what happened to the original priestly garments, but this week’s reading gives a detailed description of what kohanim were to wear from the time of Aaron on. Presumably, when the Jerusalem temple is rebuilt, tomorrow’s Mr. Cohen or Kohn (or, for that matter, Katz or Kaplan or Zilkha or Azulai or Gindi) will be fitted with the appropriate garb.