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BIBLICAL COLORS AND NUMBERS
They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him.
—MARK 15:17
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”
—MATTHEW 4:1-2
God is a colorful God. He communicates to us through different colors. While colors have various meanings depending on the culture one lives in, I believe it’s imperative to understand what the Bible speaks about them. There are biblical meanings that will help us comprehend what God is speaking through different colors. God’s creation is immersed in a beautiful array of colors.
The rainbow is a sign of His covenant with man never to flood the earth again and depicts the diversity of God (see Gen. 9:13). Hearing the voice of God through colors and their meaning will open up your mind to the awesomeness of God’s creation and language. Colors play a major and oftentimes unnoticed role in our lives. Colors can influence the way a person feels and thinks.
For example, I have a friend who laughs at my jokes and turns red in the face. Or at times when he isn’t feeling good he appears to be pale looking or even yellowish. Interior decorators use a different array of colors to create an environment that is peaceful, serene, calm, and comfortable. When I was working in banking they would use the three colors on the bank’s logo—blue, gray, and white. My office was very calm because of the blue and gray colors everywhere. I enjoyed coming in to work even when there was a hostile, high-stress environment. The colors around me would speak to me and bring calmness in spite of what was going on.
Colors can speak one way to one person and something totally different to another depending on ethnicity, culture, and background. For example, the color blue may bring solidarity to me but to another person it may bring excitement. In other words, a color that stirs up faith may trigger fear in someone else. God speaks to us in our own language, culture, and environment that we are familiar with and accustomed to. God is not color blind! He sees through our own cultural lenses as well. We shouldn’t be color blinded when it comes to the many ways God desires to speak to us through other races, people, and cultures. God can and will speak through an array of things like the rainbow to express His love, mercy, grace, and heart toward His people.
The Hebrew word translated in the King James Version as “color” is ayin (Strong’s #H5869), meaning “an eye” either figuratively or literally speaking. The powerful thing about this Hebrew meaning of the word color is that there are people who have different eye colors. I have seen green, blue, hazel, black, and other eye colors depending on race. According to the 1913 Jewish Encyclopedia and several Bible commentaries, ancient Hebrew had no specific term to describe the property of light we call colors. Although the King James Version lists various colors (bay, black, blue, brown, crimson, green, gray, hoar, purple, red, scarlet, sorrel, vermilion, white, and yellow), a precise translation of the underlying original language word(s) is difficult.
Below is a list by Jacob Olesen in his article called “Biblical Meanings of God”1 where he provides a brief summary of the primary and secondary Bible colors:
1.Amber—Glory of God, judgment upon sin, endurance, and perseverance.
2.Orange—Fire of God, deliverance, passionate praise.
3.Pink/Fuchsia—Right relationship, divine connection, union, and equality.
4.Scarlet—Royalty, fine linen for tabernacle and sacrifice.
5.Red—Blood of Jesus, love of God, blood of lamb, atonement, salvation and sign of the times, oath and covenant agreement.
6.Blue—Heaven, Holy Spirit, authority, Covering, supernatural, dimensions, prophetic/prophecy, deep, depth, and spiritual realm.
7.Purple—Priesthood, kingship, royalty, mediator, wealth, and prosperity.
8.Gold—Glory, divinity, Kingship, eternal deity, foundation, altar, beauty, precious, holiness, majesty, righteousness.
9.Wine—New birth, multiply, overflow.
10.Sapphire—Law, commandments, grace, Holy Spirit, divine revelation.
11.Turquoise—River of God, sanctification, healing, New Jerusalem.
12.Green—Praise, growth, prosperity, new beginning, flourishing, restoration, life, fertility, good fruit, and rest.
13.Silver—Word of God, purity, divinity, salvation, truth, atonement, redemption.
14.White—Bride of Christ, surrender, harvest, light, righteousness, conquest, victory, blessedness, joy, angels, saints, peace, completion, purity, and triumph.
15.Brown—End of season, rags/filthy, people, flesh, carnal, pride, weary, and faint.
16.Yellow—Faith and Glory of God, anointing, joy or disease (negative side).
17.Black—Darkness, sin, Earth, affliction, humiliation, calamity, death, mourning, and mysteries.
Another powerful way that God communicates is through biblical numerology. Numerology is the study of numbers from a biblical base or standpoint. We must avoid the New Age approach to numerology like the plague. God is a God who knows how to count and uses numbers to get His point, message, and precept across. We know there is a book in the Bible called the Book of Numbers. He uses numbers for consensus, data, blessings, and other divine purpose that speaks of His vastness and infallible nature.
We try to figure God out but most of us cannot figure out basic Algebra, calculus, trigonometry, statistics, geometry, topology, logics, number theory, mathematical physics, computation, and the lists goes on and on. However, God doesn’t want us to understand all of Him per se but to believe Him and that He is God. God is not requiring us to know everything about Him; it would be impossible to try to figure Him out, but we are required to be in love, fellowship, and covenant to believe and have faith in Him. God will use numbers to speak prophetic revelation to us.
I remember when I turned 22 years old the Lord spoke to me out of Isaiah 22:22: “Then I will set on his shoulder the key of the house of David; when he opens no one will shut, when he shuts no one will open” (AMP). In other words, God spoke a rhema (inspired word) through the Logos (written Word of God) in my current season. He used the number 22, my age, and Isaiah 22:22 as reference Scripture of encouragement. Later that year I went to college where other doors of opportunity that were shut before began to open because of the prophetic Word of God.
God is a God of numbers just as He is a God of colors. Students of the Word of God will use biblical numbers to reveal God’s concepts, intents, and mind. Oftentimes, numbers have both a symbolic and theological meaning according to Scripture, and numbers we see in visions, dreams, and prophecy could reveal what God is speaking or planning to accomplish in the life of someone or even in a society, region, or the world.
Furthermore, numbers can have various meanings in Scripture. This is not a study of numbers but a summary of what biblical numbers briefly can convey to those who are children of God and Spirit filled. The objective of this section is not to offer you a complex study guide on numerology. The premise here is to shine light on what numbers mean biblically and give you a primer on biblical numerology so you can see how the Lord can and does communicate prophetically through numbers in the Bible to people just like you and me.
There are some prophetic books in the Bible like Daniel and Revelation that show a complex interrelated numerology system that provides a definite sequence or pattern. Most Bible scholars traditionally agree that the follow numbers below have either a literal or symbolic significance:
Number One (1): Scriptural significance: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4 ESV).
Number Two (2): Scriptural significance: “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil” (Eccles. 4:9 ESV).
Number Three (3): Scriptural significance: “Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish” (Matt. 12:40).
Number Four (4): Scriptural significance: “He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth” (Isa. 11:12 ESV).
Number Five (5): Scriptural significance: “And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves” (Matt. 14:19).
We can see from the brief list above that numbers can speak to us. God can speak to us through colors and numbers that are relevant to our time, culture, calling, and personality. Most of you have a favorite color or colors. What makes that particular color important to you? It’s probably because that particular color stands out and it speaks to you personally. Numbers can speak and mean something to us as well. God speaks to us about colors and numbers that are biblically relevant and gives us a fuller meaning of them when we share them with others.
NOTE
1.Jacob Olesen, “Biblical Meanings of God,” https://www.color-meanings.com/biblical-meaning-colors.