"For Aaron's sons you shall make coats and sashes and caps. You shall make them for glory and beauty. And you shall put them on Aaron your brother, and on his sons with him, and shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests. You shall make for them linen undergarments to cover their naked flesh. They shall reach from the hips to the thighs; and they shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they go into the tent of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister in the Holy Place, lest they bear guilt and die. This shall be a statute forever for him and for his offspring after him.
Exodus 28:40-43
Again, as in 2, the priestly garments are said to be, 'for glory and for beauty'. Here however the garments are of plain white linen, not the gorgeous colourings mentioned earlier in the chapter. White robes in Scripture, however, are in fact emblems of glory, in that they typify righteousness and holiness and majesty (cf Daniel 7:9; Mark 9:3; John 20:12; Acts 1:10; Revelation 4:4, 6:11, 7:9-14, 15:6, 19:8). We should bear in mind that white light contains all the colours of the spectrum. We are certainly not meant, therefore, to think of absence of colour here. It is to be noted that the garments for the priests were designed principally for covering rather than for ornament and the obvious inference here is that this was meant to stand in sharp contrast to heathen worship, which was then, and still is even today, so often characterised by nakedness and indecency and sensuality (see also Exodus 32:25). In the worship of God there must be an absence of anything to excite the senses or stir wrong desire. This is a good argument for austerity in worship, and is just as relevant for the higher forms of aesthetic appeal as for lower sensualities. For the same reason, it is an indication of how important seemliness of dress is in the house of God. It is true that the Scriptures say, 'Rend your heart and not your garments' (Joel 2:13), and 'The Lord looketh on the heart' (1 Samuel 16:7), but when the garments and the outward appearance tell something significant about the heart, the Lord looks on these too, and takes exception to them. This is the point suggested here, and we do well to note it with care.