Covenant, Kanaph and Communion: Lessons from the Tallit

In a world of nearly seven billion souls, more than two billion are Christian. Of those, countless millions attend church services every Sunday, where they worship God in song, bring their tithes and offerings, and listen attentively to the Word of God from a minister.

Liturgies and traditions may vary between denominations and from church to church, yet there is fundamental unity in the essentials of the faith. Nevertheless, many Christians are unaware of how deeply many of the fundamental aspects of Christianity’s origins lie in Judaism.

In this article we shall take a closer look at one of those underlying connections between our sister faiths to see how a better understanding of Old Covenant revelation can assist Christians today in better understanding their New Covenant identity.

David sent out spies and learned that Saul had come.

 

Then David rose and came to the place where Saul had encamped. And David saw the place where Saul lay, with Abner the son of Ner, the commander of his army. Saul was lying within the encampment, while the army was encamped around him.

 

Then David said to Ahimelech the Hittite, and to Joab's brother Abishai the son of Zeruiah, "Who will go down with me into the camp to Saul?" And Abishai said, "I will go down with you."

 

So David and Abishai went to the army by night. And there lay Saul sleeping within the encampment, with his spear stuck in the ground at his head, and Abner and the army lay around him. Then said Abishai to David, "God has given your enemy into your hand this day. Now please let me pin him to the earth with one stroke of the spear, and I will not strike him twice."

 

But David said to Abishai, "Do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against Yahweh's anointed and be guiltless?" And David said, "As Yahweh lives, Yahweh will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish. Yahweh forbid that I should put out my hand against Yahweh's anointed. But take now the spear that is at his head and the jar of water, and let us go."

 

So David took the spear and the jar of water from Saul's head, and they went away. No man saw it or knew it, nor did any awake, for they were all asleep, because a deep sleep from Yahweh had fallen upon them.

When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, "Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi." Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wildgoats' Rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself.

 

Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, "Here is the day of which Yahweh said to you, 'Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.'" Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

 

And afterward David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

These are two superficially similar accounts of David’s dealings with King Saul, during his days of exile when Saul pursued and tried to kill David, but they are not identical. So, what differences do we find between these two accounts and how are they significant?

1. In 1 Samuel 24:4-5,

 David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

2. In 1 Samuel 26:12,

David took the spear and the jar of water from Saul's head…because a deep sleep from Yahweh had fallen upon them.

In other words, while David cut off the corner of Saul’s robe by his own stealth, he was able to take Saul’s spear and water jar because God had caused Saul to fall into a stupor. This tells us that David had God’s approval for taking Saul’s spear but not for cutting his robe. Why might that be?

We see this confirmed by a third point, illustrated in 1 Samuel 24:4-5, ‘David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe’, whereas he had no such crisis of conscience over taking the king’s spear. But why?

Part of the answer is found in the last chapter of the last Book in the Christian canon of the Old Testament.

"For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says Yahweh of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings.

 

You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act,” says Yahweh of hosts."Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of Yahweh comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."

Although the connection between 1 Samuel 24:4-5 and Malachi 4:2 is not immediately apparent in our English translations, it is blindingly obvious in the original Hebrew where we see the same word used to refer to both the corner of Saul’s robe and the healing wings of God - the word ‘Kanaph’.

Nor is it an insignificant grammatical technicality but a major point of Hebrew theology, as we shall see from the following two Old Testament scriptures where we find it commanded.

You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.

You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners (kanaph) of the garment with which you cover yourself.

Yahweh said to Moses, "Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels (tzitzit) on the corners (kanaph) of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue (tekhelet) on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of Yahweh, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.

 

So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God.

 

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I am Yahweh your God."

Three things are mentioned here: thekanaph, the zitzitand the tekhelet , or the corner, the tasseland the blue cord.

The garment itself, of which the kanaph is part, is called a tallit, or prayer shawl, which observant Jews wear for morning prayers, Shabbat and holidays.

Anybody who’s seen pictures of Jews praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem or at synagogue will be familiar with the tallit gadol which is worn for those special occasions, while many others will have seen the tassels hanging from an undergarment worn by many Jews known as the tallit katan. This is a rectangle of cloth with a hole cut in the middle for the head, and which is worn a bit like a tabard. And whereas the tallit gadol is worn only on specific ceremonial occasions, the tallit katan is worn at all times.

Ironically, although called the ‘big tallit’, the modern tallit gadol is actually a stylised version of a much larger garment originally more closely resembling the tallit katan and both tallitot are treated with the utmost respect. There is even a special blessing recited when putting on the prayer shawl:

Baruch ata Adonai Eloheynu Melech ha'olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav ve’tzivonu l’hitatef b’tzitzit.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has made us holy with the Mitzvot and instructed us to wrap ourselves with tzitzit.

This is said while holding up the tallit and kissing both ends of the atarah or crown on which the prayer is often embroidered.

Watch any Jew perform this ritual you could be forgiven for thinking that the prayer shawl is an especially sacred garment, but you would be wrong and will have made a mistake common among Gentiles which is to assume that the tassels at each of its corners are embellishments added to decorate the shawl, whereas the exact opposite is the case.

The whole purpose of a tallit is to provide a platform that will enable the wearer to put on the tzitzit. In other words it is the tzitzit that makes the tallit holy and not the other way round.

The reason for this is that the cords and their various threads and knots that form the tzitzit represents the character, covenant and commandments of Yahweh. In a very real sense they represent God himself. And this is especially true of the blue tekhelet thread whose colour is associated with heaven and divinity.

You may be aware that most tallitot do not incorporate the blue thread because the correct ingredients and recipe for the dye were lost for centuries, and devout Jews respectfully refused to use any incorrect substitute. This has changed in recent years since the correct formula is believed to have been rediscovered by scholars and the tekhelet restored.

Now we can see why David could steal Saul’s spear without the least pang of conscience (even indeed, with God’s connivance) yet his conscience was stricken when he cut off one of Saul’s tzitzitot. In fact, some Jews still consider this a part of their burial rites, where the deceased’s body is placed in a plain coffin, dressed in a shroud and a tallit with one tzitzit cut off.

Just how seriously such things were taken by the Jews of Jesus’ day, we shall see shortly, but before we do, let’s check out some background scriptures and look at the law concerning the issue of blood.

"When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening.

 

And everything on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean. Everything also on which she sits shall be unclean.

 

And whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening.

 

And whoever touches anything on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening.

 

Whether it is the bed or anything on which she sits, when he touches it he shall be unclean until the evening.

 

And if any man lies with her and her menstrual impurity comes upon him, he shall be unclean seven days, and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.

"If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean.

 

Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity. And everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity.

 

And whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening.

 

But if she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean.

 

And on the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest, to the entrance of the tent of meeting.

 

And the priest shall use one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for her before Yahweh for her unclean discharge.

 

"Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst."

This blood taboo relates to the ‘sanctity of life’ and has always been taken extremely seriously by devout Jews, among whom many married couples will not even share a double bed lest they break it inadvertently.

And as something of a ‘belt and braces’ addition to the Torah’s commandment of separation during a woman’s period, later tradition added the miqvah - or ritual bath of full emersion - which she took at the end of it. And, while it may be an unfamiliar term to most Christians today, the ritual of miqvah is actually the basis of the rite we call ‘baptism’ because it was used for the purification of new believers in Judaism.

Just how far back the practice of miqvah goes is uncertain, but we do know that it was practiced in the days of King David.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

 

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.

 

And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, "Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"

 

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house.

 

And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant."

This is one of the less wholesome episodes in the life of King David, where he famously commits adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his most loyal Mighty Men.

I don’t know whether it ever occurred to you to wonder what on earth Bathsheba was doing taking a bath where she could be seen by the king, but one thing is for certain, David recognised the significance of what Bathsheba was doing right away, because the passage tells us she was taking her miqvah seven days after her period which advertised that she was sexually available - and David wasn‘t slow to take up her offer.

In the New Testament, we see the other side of the coin in Mark 5:25-34 where a woman whose life has been ruined by 12-years of abnormal bleeding comes to Jesus. As we have seen, under the Law, her condition made her a social pariah and she might as well have been a leper for all the social contact she would have been allowed, yet we read:

And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I will be made well."

 

And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my garments?"

 

And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, 'Who touched me?'" And he looked around to see who had done it.

 

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

Once we fully understand the full latitude and impact of the Levitical law we can better appreciate this woman’s absolute desperation, and understand why Jesus was her last ad only hope. Yet, peculiarly, she did not seek him directly to ask him to heal her, but instead said, "If I touch even his garments, I will be made well."

But it is Matthew’s parallel account that fills in a vital detail that Mark’s version omits:

And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: (Matthew 9:20)

Nor was she alone, because Matthew 14:35-36 also mentions:

And recognizing him, the men of that place sent to all that neighbourhood, and brought to him all who were diseased. And they begged him that they might only touch the hem of his robe. And as many as touched were made perfectly whole.

Notice, it wasn’t Jesus or his tallit they wanted to touch so much as his tzitzit for reasons that largely escapes the Gentile reader. Indeed, as we see in Matthew’s Gospel, there was a widespread belief that there was healing virtue in the tzitzit of a man of God. But surely that’s superstition. Well no! Jesus rather calls it faith, because all who believed it had implicit faith in God’s Covenant promise in Malachi 4:2,

‘for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.’

You see, to the Hebrew mind faith is not merely some intellectual exercise or paradigm of mental assent but evidence of faithfulness. Over the centuries, Gentile tradition has often diluted the faith of the early Church until it has dwindled to little more than a slogan, whereas God’s idea of faith is simply having enough confidence in what he says to act accordingly.

And we have to understand that there are millions around the world who believe in Jesus Christ. They believe he existed; they believe he was a good man; they believe he was a moral teacher who taught wonderful life principles; many believe he was holy, a prophet and a man of God, but only Christians believe that he is God, the same God who makes and keeps his covenants.

So how does it all tie together? What’s the point? And how does it relate to the Church today? Simply by this: It’s very easy to look at things through human eyes and miss what God sees.

When we look at the tallit, we see a prayer shawl, decorated with tassels, but what God sees are holy tassels which just happen to be attached to a piece of cloth.

And that’s where much of the Church is with respect to Holy Communion, also known as the Lord‘s Supper.

When we come to Church on a Sunday what do we see?

For many Christians Church means meeting together so that they can participate in praise and in worship by singing songs and giving tithes and offerings; they expect to hear a message preached and maybe do some ministry…

…Oh, and if there’s any time left over, they may even squeeze in some Communion.

The importance of the Lord’s Supper is discussed in more detail in my article ‘Take, eat: The significance of the Lord’s Supper’, but I can think of no better summary of its centrality than Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 11:23-30.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

 

In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

 

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

This, in case you’d never seen it before, connects Christian Communion with the Hebrew tzitzit, because not only is there healing in both, but that healing is most affective when we discern the character and covenant faithfulness of the Lord, which is why Jesus did not take the unleavened bread and say, ‘This is like my Body’ but, ‘This is my Body’. Likewise, the Communion wine is his Blood.

The woman with the issue of blood was not healed because she asked Jesus to heal her, indeed, Jesus was not even aware of her need before she took him by surprise, touched his tzitzit and took her healing - something that Jesus acknowledged in his own words as faith.

The corollary of her faith is seen in Paul’s words when he berates the Corinthian Church for treating Holy Communion so lightly that they fail to recognise the healing that is available to those who properly discern its efficacy.

When God comes to his Church he sees his Son Jesus in our midst and in whose presence our heavenly Father desires that we rest and receive from him.

Jesus is God’s centrepiece around whom everything else we do revolves. Around him we come together to receive, and to him we come together to give thanks by honouring his finished work on the Cross. All the rest is wonderful but peripheral. God will not fall off his throne if not one song is sung, but if we allow Communion to slide down the agenda we elevate our own performance above Jesus, and dishonour God’s priceless gift of grace.

When we do that it’s like regarding the tallit as holy while despising the tzitzit as a common decoration, whereas God sees it as entirely the other way round. Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, is not an add-on, an extra, an afterthought, or a sideline.

God, and God only, is our centrepiece, and as wonderful as praise and worship may be, and as commendable as tithes and offerings are, or however good the teaching and preaching we might enjoy, there’s an old saying that ‘you cannot give what you don’t have’, which is why we have to receive from our Father first.

In Mark 12:28 Jesus is famously asked by an inquisitive scribe:

“Which is the first commandment of all?”

Jesus’ answer and the response of the crowd eloquently illustrate everything we have read:

And Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.

 

‘And the second is like this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

 

And the scribe said to him, “Right, Teacher, according to truth you have spoken, that God is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

 

And seeing that he had answered intelligently, Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question him any more. (verses 29-34)

Once we understand that Church is not all about us but about God, his love for us, and our showing our appreciation to him for all he has done for us, we will stop elevating the big cloth and despising the tassel. Then, as we recognise God’s priorities and appreciate his grace in their proper perspective, we will learn to rest in Christ and stop trying to perform for our Father, and receive his grace as the gift it was always intended to be.