Priestly breastplate

"Hoshen" and "Choshen" redirect here. For the organization, see Hoshen (organization). For the rabbinic text, see Choshen Mishpat.

Ceramic replica of the High Priest's breastplate

The priestly breastplate or breastpiece of judgment (Hebrew: חֹשֶׁן ḥōšen) was a sacred breastplate worn by the High Priest of the Israelites, according to the Book of Exodus. In the biblical account, the breastplate is termed the breastplate of judgment (Hebrew: חֹשֶׁן מִשְׁפָּט ḥōšen mišpāṭ – Exodus 28:15), because the Urim and Thummim (Hebrew: הָאוּרִים וְהַתֻּמִּים hāʾūrīm wəhattummīm) were placed upon it (Exodus 28:30). These elements of the breastplate are said in the Exodus verse to carry the judgment (Hebrew: מִשְׁפָּט mišpāṭ) of God concerning the Israelites at all times.

Hebrew Bible

Illustration of priestly breastplate

According to the description in Exodus, this breastplate was attached to the tunic-like garment known as an ephod by gold chains/cords tied to the gold rings on the ephod's shoulder straps and by blue ribbon tied to the gold rings at the belt of the ephod. The biblical description states that the breastplate was also to be made from the same material as the ephod—embroidery of 3 colors of dyed wool and linen—and was to be 1⁄3 of a cubit squared, two layers thick, and with four rows of three engraved gems embedded in gold settings upon it, one setting for each stone. The description states that the square breastplate was to be formed from one rectangular piece of cloth—1⁄3 of a cubit by 2⁄3 of a cubit, folded so that it formed a pouch to contain the Urim and Thummim.

The Hebrew term for the breastplate, חֹשֶׁן‎ (ḥōšen), appears to be named from its appearance; The 19th-century German biblical scholar August Dillmann thought that it was likely to be derived from the Hebrew word חֹצֶן‎ (ḥōṣen), meaning "fold", relating to its function.

According to the Talmud, the wearing of the Hoshen atoned for the sin of errors in judgment on the part of the Children of Israel.

The jewels

Artist's conception of Jewish high priest wearing a hoshen in ancient Judah

According to the Biblical description, the twelve jewels in the breastplate were each to be made from specific minerals, none identical to another, and each of them representative of a specific tribe, whose name was to be inscribed on the stone.

According to a rabbinic tradition, the names of the twelve tribes were engraved upon the stones with what is called ‮שָׁמִיר‬‎ shamir in Hebrew, which Jewish legend explains to be a small, rare creature which could cut through the toughest surfaces. According to most authorities such as Rabbi David Kimhi and Rabbi Jonah ibn Janah, shamir was a stone stronger than iron, probably emery which finds its equivalent in the Greek, σμήρις (smeris).

There are different views in classical rabbinical literature as to the order of the names; the Jerusalem Targum, for example, argued that the names appeared in the order according to which they were born. Maimonides describes the jewel stones arranged in four rows, saying that on the first stone belonging to Reuben were also engraved the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while on the last stone belonging to Benjamin were also engraved the words "the tribes of God"; kabbalistic writers such as Hezekiah ben Manoah and Bahya ben Asher argued that only six letters from each name were present on each stone, together with a few letters from the names of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, or from the phrase "[these are] the tribes of Jeshurun", so that there were 72 letters in total (72 being a very significant number in Kabbalistic thought).

There was also a different order for the names inscribed on the two "onyx" stones on the High Priest's shoulders. One opinion suggests that the names of the twelve tribes were arranged in groups after their mothers: Leah's six sons aligned one after the other on one stone, with Judah heading this list, followed by Rachel's sons with the names of the concubines' sons interposed between the two sons of Rachel.

Unfortunately, the meanings of the Hebrew names for the minerals, given by the Masoretic text, are obscure and historically subjected to dispute. Several recent studies have developed a scientific methodology for identifying the jewels of the breastplate. Harrell, Hoffmeier & Williams (2017) compared the Hebrew gemstones with attested gemstones from Ancient Egypt. Ayil (2024) compared the Hebrew names with names of gemstones from across the Ancient Near East, claiming to have identified 11 out of twelve with a high degree of certainty.

Though the Greek names for them in the Septuagint are more apparent, some scholars believe that they cannot be wholly relied on for this matter because the Septuagint's translations are contradictory. Several Greek names for various gems have changed meaning between the classical era and modern times. Classical rabbinical literature argues that the names were inscribed using shamir because neither chisels nor paint nor ink were allowed to mark them out, whereas a more naturalistic approach suggests that the jewels must have had comparatively low hardness to be engraved upon. Therefore, this gives an additional clue as to the identity of the minerals.

Explanations of the symbolic meaning of the jewels generated a great deal of both Jewish and Christian writing and were a staple component of the tradition of lapidaries or books on gemology.

The names and proposed identities of the jewel stones are as follows:

First row

• Odem (אֹדֶם in the Masoretic text) / Sardios (in the Septuagint) – derives from the root meaning 'red' and probably refers to carnelian or sard, a common gemstone in classical cultures. All authors agree that this stone was red. A parallel semantic development occurred in the Akkadian term sāmtu ("carnelian"), which derived from sāmu (also meaning "red"), suggesting that Odem referred to carnelian. Carnelian was a common gemstone in the surrounding regions of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Some modern translations translate this stone as being a ruby, even though rubies were unknown in biblical times.
• Pitdah (פִּטְדָה in the Masoretic text) / Topazios (in the Septuagint) – despite the suggestion of some interpreters that it was topaz, topaz was scarcely known at the time the Book of Exodus was written; in the classical era, topazios referred to Topazos Island (topazios means to seek, in reference to the difficulty in finding the island), on which a peridot was mined. Peridot, a light green semi-precious stone, was found in two Middle Kingdom scarabs discovered by Flinders Petrie and in Berenike's Great Temple, respectively. The word pit'dah is thought by some scholars to be related to Greek topazios. In Ancient Greek literature, this word always refers to peridot.
• Bareḳet (בָּרֶקֶת in the Masoretic text, cf. בָּרְקַת) / Smaragdos (in the Septuagint) – Bareketh etymologically means 'yellow-green', whence its color. Smaragdos is cognate with emerald, but is somewhat of a false friend as the Greek term could apply to several different green gems, not just the emerald in particular. Smaragdos was often used in Greek literature to refer to an intensely bright crystal found in columnar formations. Emerald in the stricter modern sense of green beryl exists locally in Egypt. Emerald was not actively mined until the Ptolemaic period. Another mineral resembling the emerald is green jasper (taking into account the implication of Bareketh that it was green); there is much to be said for bareḳet being this stone. Although "emerald" is the most common form used to describe the Hebrew word, bareḳet, in other sources (e.g. the Septuagint on Ezekiel 28:13), the word bareḳet is rendered as "onyx". Aquilas the proselyte (Onkelos), in his Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch, writes בָרקָן = barḳan, for this word. According to the Midrash Rabba (Numbers Rabba 2:7), the stone called bareḳet had veins or parallel bands of colors white, black, and red running through it, suggesting that it may have been a kind of agate or onyx. In the South Arabian dialect spoken in Yemen during the Middle Ages, baḳarani (believed to be a corruption of barḳan) was an exceptionally beautiful and rare onyx stone mined on Mount Anis, in Yemen, one variety of which having a red surface with a vein of white over another of black running through it. This may explain why, in some French translations, the word is rendered as "agate". Symmachus, an ancient Jewish translator whose Greek translation of the Pentateuch appeared in Origen's Hexapla, has also written κεραύνιος in Exodus 28:17, literally meaning ‘of a thunderbolt’, following the resemblance of the Hebrew word bareḳet to the word baraḳ ‘lightning’. Jerome, however, understood the Greek word to mean "onyx".. In the KJV Bible, the third stone is listed as a carbuncle, in Exodus 28:17.

Second row

Interpretation of the hoshen by Robert Hindmarsh

• Nofekh (נֹפֶךְ in the Masoretic text) / Anthrax (in the Septuagint) – Nofekh appears to be a loan word, deriving from the Egyptian term mfkꜣt, referring to turquoise, a frequently greenish blue stone. This mineral was most frequently mined in Egypt during the second millennium BCE at the sites of Serabit el-Khadim and Gebel Maghara in the Sinai Peninsula. While Anthrax means coal (presumably here referring to the color of burning coal), the Vulgate here has carbunculus, referring to the carbuncle, which was red. Philo of Alexandria, when writing about this stone, says that it was red. He seems to agree with Josephus, the LXX, and the Jerusalem Targum, the latter saying that it is כדכדנא, explained by Saadia Gaon as meaning karkand, a red variety of precious stone. In classical rabbinical literature, there is disagreement whether Nofekh was red or greenish blue; Exodus Rabbah and the second Jerusalem Targum favor it being red, while the Babylonian Targum and first Jerusalem Targum favor it being green.
• Sappir (סַפִּיר in the Masoretic text) / Sapphiros (in the Septuagint) – despite appearing to refer to sapphire, sapphire was essentially unknown before the era of the Roman Empire and its use in Greek texts is believed to be a mere transliteration of the Hebrew. Once it became more known, it was rendered in Greek and Latin as hyacinth or of jacinth. It is more likely that the term sappir referred to a mineral of similar color to sapphires and that the name gradually came to refer to the latter mineral on account of its color; scholars think the most likely candidate is lapis lazuli, a stone with a deep, ocean-blue color which was frequently sent as a gift to Akhenaten from Babylon. Theophrastus mentions the stone sapphirus as being "dark" and having the "colour of verdigris", as well as being "speckled as of with gold". By all accounts, his description fits the lapis-lazuli.
• Yahalom (יָהֲלֹם in the Masoretic text) / Iaspis ἴασπις (in the Septuagint) – in some other places the Septuagint instead has Beryllios where the Masoretic reads Yahalom. A few scholars have suggested that Yahalom may refer to diamonds, owing to their hardness, though the skill of cutting diamonds had not been discovered before the classical era. The Septuagint employs the word Iaspis, which Pliny the Elder only described as referring to a category of blue-green stones composed of a great number of mineral species. In the Syriac Peshitta of the sixth or seventh century (MS. B.21, Inferiore of the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Italy), the word used to describe this stone is ܢܩܥܬܐ = naq'atha, a word which is sometimes transliterated into Arabic as it is pronounced in Aramaic, mainly by Arabic-speaking Christians. Bar-Ali, a 9th-century Arab author, brings down two opinions about this stone, the naq'atha, saying, by one opinion, that it is "honey-coloured", and by the other opinion that it is "turquoise, a blue-coloured stone". In some versions of the Peshitta, the Aramaic word rendered for the same stone is shabzez, translated as "diamond". This may account for today's understanding of this word, although in ancient times yahalom may have meant something else. Other scholars have proposed a variety of quartz, especially the common milky quartz (known for its moon-like whiteness) or the sappharine variety of chalcedony, which was popular and precious in Mesopotamia at least, and has a moon-like bluish-white color. Spanish Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Ezra says the yahalom was a white stone.

Third row

An 1837 illustration depicting breastplate, with the tribes and their jewels

• Lešem (לֶשֶׁם in the Masoretic text) / Ligurios (in the Septuagint) – the Hebrew name appears to be derived from Egyptian nšmt, referring to amazonite. This etymological translation stands in contrast to traditions following the Septuagint. Theophrastus mentions the fossilized pine resin, amber, called in Greek liggourrion or lyngurium, as does Dioscorides and Aëtius. In Greek antiquity, this stone was believed to have been the solidified urine of lynxes, and its name a mere corruption of lykos ouron, meaning white urine, presumably about its color. Pliny (who did not believe the stone existed) described the ligurios as having certain electrical properties, which some scholars have taken to imply that it referred to amber. Amber was one of the first items to have been discovered to have electrical properties (see Thales); the English stem electric derives from the Latin word for amber (elektrum). In the Latin Vulgate, the name was given as ligure, a Latinization invented by Flavius Josephus, and equated with lyngurium, but Luther used hyacinth (jacinth), and during the Renaissance belief in lyngurium died away. Modern scholars are inclined to think that the stone must have been similar to the pale color of natural gold (as opposed to the color known as gold); The Midrash Rabba (Numbers Rabba 2:7) states that the mineral had a black color, and is there named כוחלין, meaning the antimony known as stibium. Rabbi Saadia Gaon and other medieval rabbinical commentators argued that the gem itself was an onyx (Judeo-Arabic: גזע = جَزَع), although Abraham ibn Ezra casts doubt on the accuracy of Rabbi Saadia's tradition. Modern English translations use either amber or jacinth.
• Ševo (שְׁבוֹ in the Masoretic text) / Achates (in the Septuagint) – achates definitely refers to a banded agate, and ševo may derive from the Akkadian term šubû, meaning agate. Agates were common in Egypt and Assyria and were regarded as potent talismans. Isidore of Seville lists agate as being among the black gems. The Midrash Rabba (Numbers 2:7) appears to argue for the jewel in question having been a grey variety. Conversely, in Rabbi Saadia Gaon's (882–942 CE) Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, as well as in the medieval Samaritan Arabic translation, the stone is rendered as سبج, meaning obsidian.
• Aḥlamah (אַחְלָמָה in the Masoretic text) / Amethystos (in the Septuagint) – amethystos refers to amethyst, a purple mineral which was believed to protect against getting drunk from alcohol (amethyst's name refers to this belief, and literally translates as "not intoxicating"), and was commonly used in Egypt. However, most scholars agree that Aḥlamah is derived from Egyptian ḫnmt referring to red jasper, a mineral widely attested in Egypt. In the Babylonian Targum, aḥlamah is translated into a term meaning strong drinking, which appears to reference beliefs about amethyst, but in the Jerusalem Targum, it is translated into a term meaning calf's eye. The Midrash Rabba (Numbers Rabba 2:7), while describing the stone's color, says: "[It is] similar to clear wine whose redness is not too strong."

Fourth row

• Taršīš (‮תַּרְשִׁישׁ‬‎ in the Masoretic text) / Chrysolithos (in the Septuagint) – in some other places, the Septuagint instead has anthrax (meaning coal) where the Masoretic reads tarshish. Taršīš is thought by most scholars to be somehow related to the place Tarshish. Chrysolithos does not refer specifically to chrysolite, which was named much later, but is an adjective which translates as "gold-stone", meaning that it was golden. As a golden material, it likely refers to amber, or to peridot (since chrysolithos could refer to peridot in the classical era). The 2nd-century Jewish translator, Symmachus, renders the word as yakinthos, meaning "jacinth", or "hyacinth". There is little certainty among scholars regarding which of these is the most likely to be the jewel in question.
• Šoham (שֹׁהַם in the Masoretic text) / Beryllios (in the Septuagint) – in some other places, the Septuagint instead has onychion, or smaragdos, or the phrase leek-green stone, where the Masoretic reads šoham; beryllios refers to beryl but earlier to the blue-green color of the sea, onychion refers to onyx, and smaragdos literally means green stone and refers to a bright columnar crystal (either beryl or rock crystal). Onyx is an opaque and banded stone, while smaragdos is translucent, and beryl is cloudy, and all these come in several colors. Onyx was apparently mined from the pre-exilic era, making it a viable candidate for šoham. "Onyx" is derived from the Greek for fingernail due to the pink-white veining. Because existing etymologies for šoham are problematic for one reason or another, the scholar Ephraim S. Ayil suggests a possible derivation from a reconstructed Old South Arabian word *šuwahbu(m) from the root w-h-b meaning "gift". Jewish tradition generally favours leek-green beryl (heliodor) as the likely meaning of šoham, though scholars think it is more likely to be malachite, which can be green enough to be compared to smaragdos and the blue-green color of the sea (the original meaning of beryllios), is cloudy enough to be compared to a cloudy form of beryl, and is striped and opaque enough to be confused with a form of onyx. According to Epiphanius’ Treatise on the Twelve Stones (Epiphanius de Gemmis), the beryl was "white like a cloud". Scholars point out that the Syriac form of the word is berūlā and/or belūra, the latter going back to a Pahlevi form (the old Persian tongue), and all in turn to the Sanskrit वैडूर्य = vaiḍūrya (Pali: veḷuriyaṁ), the gemstone which is called in English, "cat's eye, beryl", a variety of chalcedonic quartz that has a chatoyant luster resembling the eye of a cat when cut.
• Yošfe (‮יָשְׁפֶה‬‎ in the Masoretic text, cf. יָשְׁפֵה) / Iaspis (in the Septuagint and Josephus). Although yošfe and iaspis are cognate to jasper, they do not quite have the same meaning; while jasper can be any color, the mineral which the Greeks called iaspis was generally a blue or green one (the most prized form of jasper), and scholars think this is most likely to be the color referred to by yošfe. Since a blue chalcedony has been found bearing an Elamite inscription calling it yašpu, clearly a cognate of both yošfe and Iaspis, the biblical stone has been identified as a blue chalcedony. In the Targums, where the jewel is variously identified as a ruby (which is red), as a hyacinth (which is yellow), or as an emerald (which is green). In the Babylonian Talmud, one opinion states that the gemstone was the same as kadkhod, a stone described by Bar-Ali as being al-karkahan = الكركھن (the Baghdadi onyx), "a kind of gemstone from which they cut [smaller] stones for setting in ouches". Rabbi Saadia Gaon, however, in his Judeo-Arabic translation of Isaiah, translates kadkhod as karkand, a red variety of precious stone. Josephus, quoting from one version of the Septuagint, says it was a beryl. Numbers Rabba 2:7 says that the stone was varicolored, meaning all of the colors combined were to be found in the yāšǝfêh.

12 jewels in the New Testament

In the New Testament Book of Revelation is the description of a city wall, with each layer of stones in the wall being from a different material; in the original Koine Greek, the layers are given as iaspis, sapphiros, chalcedon, smaragdos, sardonyx, sardion, chrysolithos, beryllos, topazion, chrysoprason, yacinthos, amethystos. This list appears to be based on the Septuagint's version of the list of jewels in the Breastplate – if the top half of the breastplate was rotated by 180 degrees, and the bottom half turned upside down, with Onchion additionally swapping places with Topazion, the lists become remarkably similar; there are only four differences:

• Onchion (literally onyx) has become sardonyx (red onyx)
• Anthrax has become chalcedon (literally meaning chalcedony, of which the red variety is the most common). Anthrax literally means coal, presumably the red color of burning coal.
• Ligurios has become chrysoprason. Scholars suspect that ligurios was a pale yellowish mineral, and although chrysoprase now refers to a specific gemstone which is generally apple-green in color, in earlier times it referred to gems of a yellowish leek-green, such as peridot; chrysoprase literally means golden leek.
• Achates (agate) has been replaced by yacinthos (jacinth). According to classical rabbinical literature, the specific agate was of a sky-blue color, and though jacinth now refers to a red-tinted clear gem, this was not the case at the time the Book of Revelation was written, and at that time jacinth appears to have referred to a bluish gem; Pliny describes jacinth as a dull and blueish amethyst, while Solinus describes it as a clear blue tinted gem – the modern sapphire.

Pattern

Whether there is any pattern to the choice of gemstones depends on their identity. Taking the majority view of scholars regarding the identity of the gems, and including the implication from the Book of Revelation that the onyx at the end of the fourth row was a sardonyx, there are four colors – red, green, yellow, and blue – each represented by a clear gem (red – carbuncle, green – heliodor, yellow – chrysolite, blue – amethyst), an opaque gem (red – carnelian/red jasper, green – green jasper, yellow – yellow jasper/yellow serpentine, blue – lapis lazuli), and a striped gem (red – sardonyx, green – malachite, yellow – pale golden agate, blue – sky-blue agate). The four colors of red, green, yellow, and blue are the first four colors (apart from black and white) distinguished by languages and are distinguished in all cultures with at least six color distinctions (the other two being black and white). These colors roughly correspond to the sensitivities of the retinal ganglion cells. (The retinal ganglia process color by positioning it within a blue to yellow range, and separately positioning it within a red to green range.)

See also

• Ephod
• Priestly golden head plate
• Priestly robe (Judaism)
• Priestly sash
• Priestly tunic
• Priestly turban
• Priestly undergarments

Other

• Birthstone – Gemstones representing a person's birth month
• List of inscriptions in biblical archaeology
• Twelve Stones – Stones of the Twelve Tribes of Israel

Notes

Bibliography

• Ayil, Ephraim S. (2024). Identifying the Stones of Classical Hebrew: A Modern Philological Approach. Ancient Languages and Civilizations. Vol. 7. Leiden/Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-67799-9.
• Berlin, Brent; Kay, Paul (1969). Basic Color Terms: their Universality and Evolution. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520014428.
• Blake, Robert Pierpont; de Vis, H. (1934). Epiphanius de Gemmis: the Old Georgian Version and the Fragments of the Armenian Version. London: Christophers.
• Cheyne, Thomas Kelly; Black, J. Sutherland (1899). Encyclopaedia Biblica.
• Eichholz, D. E., ed. (1965). Theophrastus: De Lapidibus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Faris, Nabih Amin (1938). The Antiquities of South Arabia: being a translation from the Arabic with linguistic, geographic, and historic notes of the eighth book of al-Hamdāni's al-Iklīl. Oxford University Press.
• Field, Frederick (1875). Origensis Hexaplorum quæ Supersunt. Oxford.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Gottheil, Richard H., ed. (1908). Bar 'Alī (Īshō'): The Syriac–Arabic Glosses. Rome: Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
• Harrell, James E.; Hoffmeier, James K.; Williams, Kenton F. (2017). "Hebrew Gemstones in the Old Testament: A Lexical, Geological, and Archaeological Analysis". Bulletin for Biblical Research. 27 (1): 1–52. doi:10.5325/bullbiblrese.27.1.0001. ISSN 1065-223X. S2CID 246560656.
• Neusner, Jacob; Sonn, Tamara (1999). Comparing Religions through Law: Judaism and Islam.
• Walton, Steven A. (2001). "Theophrastus on Lyngurium: medieval and early modern lore from the classical lapidary tradition". Annals of Science. 58 (4): 357–379. doi:10.1080/000337900110041371. PMID 11724065. S2CID 8649133.

External links

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