“You are not to wear clothing woven with two kinds of thread, wool and linen together.”-Deuteronomy 22:11
Let me start off today’s post by introducing the Hebrew word used to describe cloth woven out of the forbidden mixture of linen and wool.
That word is…
…SHA’ATNEZ.
Literally, it means “mixed material”.
That’s actually a very accurate translation.
However, and brace yourself, because contextually speaking, that’s NOT really what the word means.
SHA’ATNEZ is actually a Hebrew idiom and it means something totally different than what the words on the surface say.
Before I tell you what SHA’ATNEZ really means in its proper context here in Deuteronomy 22, I wanna do something really quick that will help me make my point better.
Let’s take a look at some common American idioms.
Have a look at the following three examples.
“That cost an arm and a leg!”
“When pigs fly!”
“Hit the books!”
Now just imagine for a second if some folks 1000 years from now stumbled upon those idioms and tried to understand them literally.
They would really be scratching their heads, wouldn’t they?
They would be thinking…
“What?! Were people actually making purchases using the limbs from animals or God forbid human bodies?!”
“Wow! Did pigs actually fly in the 21st century? Did pigs have wings back then?”
“Why in the world were college students hitting their books back then? Was it to toughen up their knuckles for some kind of martial art they were practicing?!”
Do you see what I mean?
Folks completely divorced from our current language and culture by generations of time would have no idea what the above idioms meant.
They wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails out of them…to use another idiom.
Well, here’s the thing.
This is precisely the same problem we moderns have when we read the Scriptures.
When we read our Bibles, we are literally time traveling thousands of years back to an ancient culture and time with a completely different language and mindset than our own.
Therefore, minus a concerted effort to understand what the words in our Bible really meant in their proper Hebrew cultural context, we’re going to be lost.
Period.
Okay, with that point in mind, let me explain what SHA’ATNEZ or mixed materials really meant in the Biblical era.
Recall, that the Lord’s commands about forbidden mixtures or unions are all about the 7th Commandment which says…
“Thou shall not commit adultery”.
Here’s the deal.
While SHA’ATNEZ literally means “mixed material”, the common usage and sense of the term is that it is referring to prostitution.
That’s right.
SHA’ATNEZ is a Hebrew idiom for prostitution.
Why?
Because in the Biblical era, it was customary for a prostitute to wear SHA’ATNEZ or garments made out of the forbidden mixture of linen and wool.
This meaning was well understood among the ancient Hebrews of the time.
A prostitute in those days wore attractive clothes and put on high-priced perfume to attract male customers.
The finest cloth in that era was often woven out of the Biblically forbidden mixture of wool and linen.
I’m serious.
The rich heathens also routinely wore this kind of material.
So there you have it.
If you want to really understand how the ancient Hebrews understood Deuteronomy 22:11, you have to understand that in those days mixing wool and linen for use as a garment symbolized prostitution…
…because that’s what prostitutes in the Biblical era generally wore.
But not only that.
Biblically speaking, prostitution symbolizes something much deeper and its something we’ve been studying over the past couple of days.
It symbolizes an “unauthorized” or “forbidden union”.
In other words, it refers to an illicit mixture.
Hence, in this sense, prostitution or to be more accurate “cultic prostitution”, which is using sex as form of worship to a heathen god, is a form of adultery.
Heck, cultic prostitution is BOTH adultery and idolatry.
It is the worst of all illicit mixtures or unions.
So there you have it folks.
In our English Bibles, Deuteronomy 22:11 says…
“You are not to wear clothing woven
with two kinds of thread,
wool and linen together.”
But what it REALLY means is…
“You shall NOT wear the garments of a prostitute…
…which are wool and linen together”.
I’m done.
CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
“Don’t you know that a man who joins himself
to a prostitute becomes physically one with her?
For the Tanakh says,
“The two will become one flesh”
-1 Corinthians 6:16
Thank you