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Among the writers of the NT the sense of colour is strongest in the author of the Revelation, who partly reproduces the colour-symbolism of earlier authors, priestly, prophetic, and apocalyptic, and partly is original. Colour distinctions were perhaps not so fine in ancient as in modern times; at any rate the colour vocabulary was more limited. The associations of colour vary greatly in different ages and peoples.
1. White ( ëåõêüò , connected with lux; ëáìðñüò , ‘bright’ in Revised Version , fr. [Note: fragment, from.] ëÜìðù ‘to shine’), the colour of light, is the symbol of purity, innocence, holiness; it is the primary liturgical colour. The head and hair of the Son of Man are white as wool or snow (Rev_1:14). Angels are arrayed in white (Rev_15:6; cf. Act_1:10). The elders (Rev_4:4), the martyrs (Rev_6:11), the great multitude (Rev_7:9) are clothed in white raiment: but their robes were not always white; they have washed them and made them white ( ἐëåýêáíáí ) in the blood of the Lamb (Rev_7:14). Such raiment one of the Seven Churches is counselled to buy (Rev_3:18). A hypocrite has not the white robe; he is only like a whitewashed wall ( ôïῖ÷å êåêïíéáìÝíå , Act_23:3; cf. Mat_23:27). White is the colour of victory; the first rider on a white horse (Rev_6:2) represents a conquering secular power, probably Parthia; the second is the Faithful and True (Rev_19:11), whose triumphant followers are clad in white uniform (Rev_19:14). The Son of Man is seen enthroned on a white cloud (Rev_14:14); and the great throne of God-unlike the sapphire throne in Eze_1:26 -is white.
2. Red, the first of the three primary colours of science, is in Greek ðõññüò , from ðῦñ , ‘fire.’ ‘Light and fire, when regarded ethically in Holy Scripture, are contrasts: light, the image of beneficent love; and fire, of destroying anger’ (Delitzsch, Iris, Eng. translation , 1889, p. 73). The swordsman upon the red horse (Rev_6:5) represents war and bloodshed; the great red dragon (Rev_12:3) the same, probably with the added idea of fire.
3. Black ( ìÝëáò ) indicates the absence of light: a white object is one which reflects nearly all the light of all colours; a black object absorbs nearly all. Ethically considered, the withdrawal of light is weird and appalling. The revelation at Sinai was made in ‘blackness ( ãíüöïò , gloom) and mist and tempest’ (Heb_12:18). Black is the colour of famine; the third of the four riders in the Apocalypse, who brings dearth, goes forth on a black horse (Rev_6:5). A great earthquake makes the sun black as sackcloth of hair (Rev_6:12; cf. Joe_2:30-31; Ass. Mos. x. 4f.; Virg. Georg. i. 463f.). For men whose lives belie their profession there is reserved the blackness of darkness ( ὁ æüöïò ôïῦ óêüôïõò , 2Pe_2:17|| Jud_1:13; cf. Homer, Il. xxi. 56).
4. Purple ( ðïñöýñá , purpura) now denotes a shade varying between crimson and violet, but to the ancients it was a red-purple dye, which might even be mistaken for scarlet (cf. Joh_19:2 with Mat_27:28). It was obtained from a shellfish (purpura, murex) found near Tyre and on the shores of Tarentum and Laconia. The throat of each molluse yielded one drop of the precious fluid. The manufacture and sale of the dye was the monopoly of the Phœnicians. Pliny says of Tyre that, while she once ‘thirsted so eagerly for the conquest of the whole earth … all her fame is now confined to the production of the murex and the purple’ (Historia Naturalis (Pliny) v. 17). Cloth of purple was the emblem of royalty and nobility-purpura regum (Virg. Georg. ii. 495). The soldiers arrayed Christ with it in derision (Mat_15:17; Mat_15:20). It was among the costly merchandise of Imperial Rome (Rev_18:12). The Maccabees noted that the sober-minded Romans of the Republic did not wear it (1Ma_8:14), but Pliny remarks on ‘the frantic passion for purple’ in his time (Historia Naturalis (Pliny) ix. 60). The prophet of the Revelation knows that the great city is arrayed in it (Rev_18:16). The apocalyptic harlot clothes herself with it (Rev_17:4). The finest kind of purple was ‘the Tyrian dibapha (double-dyed), which could not be bought for even 1000 denarii per pound’ (Pliny, ix. 63). Lydia (Act_16:14-15; Act_16:40) was a seller of purple ( ðïñöõñüðùëéò ), but it is now generally believed that the Thyatiran dye, which she was engaged in selling, was the modern turkey red, which is extracted from the madder root (rubia).
5. Scarlet ( êüêêéíïò ) was obtained from the female of the kermes insect (Arab. kirmiz, whence the synonymous ‘crimson’), which, when impregnated, attaches itself to the holm-oak, and was long supposed to be a red berry or seed-a mistake found in Pliny (Historia Naturalis (Pliny) xvi. 8). The insect (Coccus ilicis) is of the same family as the cochineal of Mexico, which yields a finer dye that has superseded the ancient scarlet. Wool dyed scarlet was used in the Jewish ritual of sacrifice (Heb_9:19). Scarlet fabrics were among the merchandise of Rome (Rev_18:12)-‘rubro cocco tincta vestis’ (Hor. Sat. II. vi. 102f.). The glaring colour was the symbol of luxury and splendour. The great city was attired in it (Rev_18:15). The woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, and sitting on a scarlet-coloured beast, is an image of flaunting licentiousness (Rev_17:3-5).
6. Pale is one of the translations of ÷ëùñüò , an indefinite hue, applied as an epithet to objects so different as fresh green grass (Mar_6:39) and yellow sand (Soph. Aj. 1064). Both meanings were common from Homer downwards. The pale horse in Rev_6:8 has the livid hue of death.
7. Hyacinthine ( ὑáêßíèéíïò ) is one of the three colours of the breastplates of the fiendish horse-men in Rev_9:17. ὑÜêéíèïò is the Septuagint translation of úְּáֵìָú , a dye obtained from another shellfish on the Tyrian coast. It was blue-purple as distinguished from red-purple; the Oxf. Heb. Lex. gives ‘violet.’ The cuirasses were also red like fire ( ðõñßíïõò ) and yellow as brimstone ( èåéþäåéò ).
The brilliant hues of the foundations, walls, gates, and streets of the New Jerusalem, and those of the robes of the inhabitants, suggest that ‘the beauty of colour … will contribute its part to the blessedness of vision in the future world’ (Delitzsch, Iris, 61).
James Strahan.