[117] Such was the vesture of the high priest. But I must not leave untold its meaning and that of its parts. We have in it as a whole and in its parts a typical representation of the world and its particular parts.
[118] Let us begin with the full-length robe. This gown is all of violet, and is thus an image of the air; for the air is naturally black, and so to speak a robe reaching to the feet, since it stretches down from the region below the moon to the ends of the earth, and spreads out everywhere. And, therefore, the gown, too, spreads out from the breast to the feet round the whole body.
[119] At the ankles there stand out from it pomegranates and flower trimming and bells. The earth is represented by the flowers, for all that flowers and grows comes from the earth; the water by the pomegranates or flowing fruit, so aptly called from their flowing juice; while the bells represent the harmonious alliance of these two, since life cannot be produced by earth without water or by water without the substance of earth, but only by the union and combination of both.
[120] Their position testifies most clearly to this explanation. For, just as the pomegranates, the flower trimming and the bells are at the extremities of the long robe, so too what these symbolize, namely earth and water, occupy the lowest place in the universe, and in unison with the harmony of the All display their several powers at fixed revolutions of time and at their proper seasons.
[121] This proof that the three elements, earth, water and air, from which come and in which live all mortal and perishable forms of life, are symbolized by the long robe with the appendages at the ankles, is supported by observing that as the gown is one, the three said elements are of a single kind, since all below the moon is alike in its liability to change and alteration, and that, as the pomegranates and flower patterns are fastened to the gown, so too in a sense earth and water are suspended on the air, which acts as their support.
[122] As for the ephod, consideration following what probability suggests will represent it as a symbol of heaven. For first the two circular emerald stones on the shoulder-pieces indicate, as some think, those heavenly bodies which rule the day and night, namely the sun and moon, or, as may be said with a nearer approach to truth, the two hemispheres of the sky. For, just as the stones are equal to each other, so is the hemisphere above to that below the earth, and neither is so constituted as to increase and diminish as does the moon.
[123] A similar testimony is given by their colour, for the appearance of the whole heaven as presented to our sight is like the emerald. Six names, too, had to be engraved on each of the stones, since each of the hemispheres also divides the zodiac into two, and appropriates six of the signs.
[124] Secondly, the stones at the breast, which are dissimilar in colour, and are distributed into four rows of threes, what else should they signify but the zodiac circle? For that circle, when divided into four parts, constitutes by three signs in each case the seasons of the year—spring, summer, autumn, winter—those four, the transition in each of which is determined by three signs and made known to us by the revolutions of the sun, according to a mathematical law, unshaken, immutable and truly divine.
[125] Therefore also they were fitted into what is rightly called the place of reason, for a rational principle, ordered and firmly established, creates the transitions and seasons of the year. And the strangest thing is that it is this seasonal change which demonstrates their age-long permanence.
[126] It is an excellent and indeed a splendid point that the twelve stones are of different colours and none of them like to any other. For each of the signs of the zodiac also produces its own particular colouring in the air and earth and water and their phases, and also in the different kinds of animals and plants.