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The High Priest's Breastplate: Manasseh

For those who, with the late lamented Lieutenant Totten, see in the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim the Anglo-Saxons of England and the United States, and who look upon George V as the king who sits upon the throne of David, these symbolical stones of the breastplate acquire an added significance. While not pretending to be able to follow all the intricate and certainly most ingenious and interesting speculations of this school of Biblical exegesis, we cannot help expressing some astonishment that Ephraim should be thought to prefigure England and Manasseh the United States, instead of vice versa. In Gen. xlviii, 17-20, the text more especially referred to in these speculations, Jacob's blessing is bestowed upon Ephraim, in spite of Joseph's protest that it should go to the eldest son, Manasseh. To this protest Jacob answers: "I know it, my son, I know it: he also [Manasseh] shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations." Certainly the very composite population of the United States perfectly merits this description. As a general rule, the Hebrews, when using the names Ephraim and Manasseh as tribal designations, maintained the twelve-fold division of the people, by substituting these tribes for Joseph and by dropping the name of Levi from the list, the tribe of Levi being assigned as priests to the care of the sanctuary, and not participating in the division of the Land of Promise. In the Midrash Bemidbar, the Rabbinical Commentary on Numbers, the tribes are given in their order, with the stone appropriate to each and the color of the tribal standard pitched in the desert camp, this color corresponding in each case with that of the tribal stone. This list represents a tradition dating back to at least the twelfth century and possibly much earlier than that; hence its value should not be underestimated, although we may not accept it without some reserves. ("Der Midrasch Bemidbar Rabba," German transl. by Dr. Aug. Wunsche, Leipzig, 1885, pp. 15, 16. Parasha II. Of the tarshish it is said the color resembled that of "the costly stone with which women adorn themselves," possibly the pearl is signified. Hebrew text in "Sepher Midrash Rabba," Vilna, 1845, pt. iii,"Sepher Bemidbar," p.23.) Odem Reuben Red Pitdah Simeon Green Bareketh Levi White, black and red Jophek Judah Sky-blue Sappir Issachar Black (like stibium) Yahalom Zebulun White Leshem Dan Sapphire-color Shebo Gad Gray Ahlamah Naphtali Wine-color Tarshish Assher Pearl-color (?) Shoham Joseph Very black Yashpheh Benjamin Colors of all the stones In the attempt to determine the identity of the stones enumerated in Exodus xxviii and xxxix, as adorning the breastplate of the high-priest, we must bear in mind that this "breastplate of Aaron" and the one described by Josephus, and brought by Titus to Rome after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., are in all probability entirely distinct objects. The former, if it ever existed, except in the ideal world of the authors of the Priestly Codex, must have been composed of the stones known to and used by the Egyptians of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, B.C., some of them being, perhaps, set in the "jewels of gold and jewels of silver" borrowed by the Israelites from the Egyptians just before the Exodus; on the other hand, the most trustworthy indications regarding the stones of the breastplate of the Second Temple, made perhaps in the fifth century B.C., should be sought in the early Greek and Latin versions of the Old Testament, and in the treatise on precious stones by Theophrastus, who wrote about 300 B.C. The Natural History of Pliny, that great storehouse of ancient knowledge, and other early writers, may also be used with profit. I. Odem. The etymology of this word clearly indicates that we have to do with a red stone, most probably the carnelian. We know that in ancient Egypt hieroglyphic texts from the Book of the Dead were engraved upon amulets made from this stone, and it was also used for early Babylonian cylinders. Fine specimens of carnelian were obtained from Arabia. The Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, as well as Josephus, in the "Wars of the Jews" (V, 5, 7), and Epiphanius, all translate sardius, the ancient designation of carnelian; in his "Antiquities," however, Josephus renders odem by "sardonyx." The Egyptian word chenem was used to designate red stones, and seems to have been applied indifferently to red jasper and red feldspar as well as to carnelian; indeed, the first-named material was more freely used in early Egyptian work than the carnelian. It is, therefore, probable that in Mosaic times odem signified red jasper, while for the fifth century B.C. "carnelian" would be the better rendering. This modern name of the sardius, signifying the "flesh-colored" stone, first appears in the Latin translation of a treatise by Luca ben Costa, who wrote in the tenth century A.D. The name of Reuben is said to have been engraved on the odem stone, which occupied the first place on the breastplate. II. Pitdah. There seems to be little doubt that this is the topazius of ancient writers, which usually signified our chrysolite, or peridot, not our topaz; for Pliny and his successors describe the topazius as a stone of a greenish hue. A legend related by Pliny gives as the place of origin an island in the Red Sea, called Topazos, from topazein, "to conjecture," because it was difficult to find. However, the Hebrew pitdah appears to have been derived from the Sanskrit pita, "yellow," and should, therefore, have originally signified a yellow stone, perhaps our topaz. W. M. Flinders Petrie, probably influenced by this Sanskrit etymology, sees in it the yellow serpentine used in ancient Egypt. If, nevertheless, we admit that a light green stone occupied the second place on the Mosaic breastplate, it was perhaps the light green serpentine. This was called meh in Egyptian, and was often used for amulets. In the case of the later breastplate we may substitute the peridot. On this second stone was engraved the name Simeon.