And suddenly a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years came from behind and touched the hem of His garment; for she said to herself, “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made whole.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, “Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you whole.” And the woman was made well from that hour. (Matthew 9:20-22)

Let us ask four questions about this famous incident:

1. What was the garment that Jesus was wearing?
2. Why did the woman want to touch it?
3. What specific part of the garment did she want to touch?
4. What did it mean for her to do so?

What Was the Garment?
The LORD (YHWH) gave the Israelites this instruction:

Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel: Tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a blue thread in the tassels of the corners. And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them … and be holy for your God.” (Numbers 15:37-40)

In Hebrew the word for tassel is tzitzit (plural, tzitziyot). The Israelites were to wear tzitzit on the four corners of their garments in order to ‘remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them’.

This tassel, or fringe, was the most important part of the basic four-cornered outer garment, called a tallit, worn by Israelite men on a daily basis. The tzitzit served as a constant reminder of the commandments of God, and symbolised God’s authority, sovereignty and rule. The tassels were a continual reminder against sinning, or more literally in Hebrew, ‘missing the mark’ – of not living up to the level of instruction given in Torah, or Law.

In 1 Samuel 15 we see an example of tzitzit representing God’s authority. King Saul was in trouble because he did not obey all that the Lord commanded. He only partially obeyed with respect to Amalek. He was commanded to destroy everything belonging to the Amalekites – to erase the memory of them utterly – but he spared King Agag and his wealth. The prophet Samuel was sent to tell him he had done wrong in the eyes of the LORD.

So Samuel said, “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the LORD anoint you king over Israel? Now the LORD sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the LORD?” (I Samuel 15:17-19)

The subject here is obedience. Tassels are to remind us ‘to obey all that the LORD has commanded.’ Saul tried to justify himself by explaining that he had kept the spoils from Amalek to use in sacrifices to God, but Samuel responded:

Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he also has rejected you from being king. (1 Samuel 15:22-23)

As the prophet turned to leave, the desperate King reached out and grasped ‘the corner of his robe’ and it tore (verse 27). What did Saul grab? One of the tassels on the corner of Samuel’s garment, and it ripped off – symbolising the severing of Saul’s reign with Almighty God and God’s rule and authority in his life. He did something very terrible.

Samuel responded:

The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today, and has given it to a neighbour of yours, who is better than you. (1 Samuel 15:28)

In the same way that Saul tore the tzitzit from Samuel’s tallit, Samuel says the LORD will remove Saul’s kingdom from him and give it to another (i.e., David).

A Sign of Authority
In I Samuel 24 Saul is searching for David. He is incensed that another man is going to be king in his place. David and his men are hiding in a cave near Ein Gedi, and Saul enters the cave to relieve himself. David’s men encourage David to seize the opportunity and slay Saul (verse 4), but David has too much respect for God’s anointed to do that. Instead, he creeps up unnoticed and cuts off the ‘corner’ of Saul’s robe, which he has removed while relieving himself.

What part of the garment did David cut off?

A tzitzit! The rabbis say that if all four tzitzit are not on a tallit it is invalidated. David therefore symbolically invalidated the authority that Saul had. The moment he did, ‘David’s heart smote him’ (verse 5, KJV). Why would he be conscience-stricken just for cutting off a piece of cloth? Because he realised the significance of what he had done – removed the symbol of God’s authority – and so he asked for forgiveness.

The tassel or tzitzit therefore is a powerful visual symbol: first, as a reminder to keep all God’s commandments, and second, as a sign of the authority and rule of God.

Tzitzit in Jesus’ Day
In the first-century, during the days of Jesus, Jewish men wore a basic woollen rectangular outer garment (tallit) with tzitzit on each corner, in accordance with Numbers 15. Underneath they wore a tunic or undergarment called a haluk. In Matthew 5:40, Jesus alludes to this common clothing when he says, ‘If someone sues you for your haluk (tunic), give him also your tallit (cloak)’. The tunic could be worn alone, without the outer cloak. The haluk covered the body. Jesus uses rabbinic hyperbole to drive home his point about the radical demands of sacrificial love – which compel us to go the extra mile, to give far beyond what normally would be asked.

As an observant Jew, Jesus himself wore a tallit with tzitzit attached to each of the four corners. There are many regulations in the Talmud about what these tassels should look like, such as how long or short they should be, how near to the corner of the garment they should be, etc. By Jesus’ day these patterns were fairly well established: the tzitzit had to be not shorter than four fingers’ breadth, but it could be of any length. In Matthew 23:5 Jesus criticises some of the hypocrites of his day because they lengthened their tzitziyot to draw attention to themselves and impress others with their seeming piety.


Significance of the Tzitzit
The tzitzit has a specific design, with many levels of meaning associated with it, and this gives us the rich background to the story in Matthew 9 of the woman with the issue of blood.

Each tassel consists of eight strands of thread – actually four strands (three white and one blue [techelet]) looped through an opening on the corner of the garment and then folded over to become eight. These eight strands are then tied in a series of five double knots. In the four spaces between the five knots the blue thread is wound a specified number of times, as stipulated in ancient Jewish tradition.

We have then:
    5 double knots,
    4 windings,
    8 strands.           
Each of these elements is highly symbolic.

For ease in remembering, let us characterise the symbolism of the tzitzit by four words, each beginning with the letter ‘T’.

1. Torah: represented by the 5 knots - The Torah or Pentateuch consists of 5 books. The Torah (Law) is Divine teaching or instruction, that gives definitive revelation of God’s identity and character.
2. Tetragrammaton: represented by the 4 windings between the knots - There are 4 letters (Greek, tetragrammaton) in the sacred covenant name God revealed to Moses: YHWH (Yahweh, or Jehovah in Christian tradition).
3. Theology: represented by the number 13 (8 strands + 5 knots) - In Hebrew we count with the alphabet, not with Arabic numerals (as in English). Every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, therefore, has a corresponding number. For example, Aleph = 1, Beth = 2, Gimmel = 3, etc. Toward the end of the alphabet you have letters that correspond to the numbers 50, 100, 200, 300, and 400. Often, key words in Hebrew are known for their corresponding numeric value (obtained by adding the numbers of the letters together). For example, chai, the Hebrew word for life, numerically adds up to 18 (chet = 8 + yud = 10). Because of this, the number 18 is considered very auspicious in Jewish tradition. One of the most important words in all the Hebrew Bible has a numeric value of 13. Indeed it conveys the core theology of Israel’s ethical monotheism, found in Deuteronomy 6:4. ‘Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad’.‘Hear O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is One’.The Hebrew word echad or one has the numeric equivalent of 13. YHWH is God alone, essentially and indivisibly ‘one’. In the Shema, the one true God of Israel summons our absolute loyalty and our exclusive worship.
4. Totality: represented by the number 613 (600 + 13) - I suggest that the final ‘T’ stands for the ‘totality’ of God’s Word. How many commandments are in the Torah? As Christians we typically think of the ‘Ten Commandments’. But it is well known in Jewish tradition that there are 613 mitzvot or commandments in the Five Books of Moses. But how do we derive ‘613’ from the tzitzit? We already have 13 (5+8); so where do we find the number 600? Would it surprise you to learn that the numeric value of the Hebrew word tzitzit is – yes, you guessed it – 600!We have symbolised in the tzitzit, therefore, the following: the Divine identity and name (4); the revelation of God’s wisdom (5); the oneness of the Godhead (8+5); and the fullness of His word and will as represented by the totality of the commandments (613).  

What did the woman touch and why?

This poor, long-suffering woman clearly wanted to touch the tzitzit on the outer garment that Jesus was wearing. Why?

There are two possibilities, with a measure of truth to each no doubt. First, the Talmud records many superstitions regarding the tzitzit and tallits of famous sages. The tassels were considered to have mystical, supernatural power. Possibly this woman is operating with this assumption. She wanted to lay hold of the tassels on the Rabbi Jesus’ cloak because he was a holy man, noted for his power and wisdom, and the tzitzit was the holiest element on his clothing.

 

What did it mean to her?

Spiritually, however, I think something more is happening here. When this persistent woman reached out in faith to touch the ‘hem of his garment’, her thinking may have been along these lines:

“If I can but lay hold of the totality or fullness of God: who He is; His nature; His word and His will – i.e., if I can but touch the wholeness of God – I myself can be made whole!”

This woman was poor and marginalised in society. The haemorrhaging of blood she suffered for many years left her not only impoverished (seeking medical assistance) but a social outcast. Contact with her would have rendered a person ritually impure. But this was a woman of faith – which in Hebrew always connotes persistence – and in her determination, she worked her way through the crowd to get to the Rabbi from Nazareth, the one who taught with uncommon authority and healed and delivered the distressed, setting captives free.

With a view to the full and profound imagery of the tzitzit, and in her determined faith, she reached out and touched the ‘hem of his garment’. Healing virtue flowed from Jesus, and she was made whole.

Should this surprise us?

Who was this man, Jesus, really? None other that the Yeshu’at Elohim, the salvation of God – literally, ‘God-saving’. In him the fullness, the wholeness, of the Godhead was incarnate. In him, the totality of God’s Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Therefore, as happened with the woman with the issue of blood, to lay hold of the totality of God’s fullness in the person of Jesus is to be made whole! Hallelu-Yah!

This article is adapted from the teaching tape, "Our Hebrew Lord: the Historical Jesus” and reprinted with the author's permission. Copyright 2006 Dwight A. Pryor. All rights Reserved. For additional studies with Dr. Pryor visit www.jcstudies.com.