A Vestment Specified Down to Its Thread Count

The ephod was the vestment of the High Priest of ancient Israel, described in the Book of Exodus in unusually precise detail, gold thread twisted together with blue, purple and scarlet yarn worked into fine linen, worn over the priest's other garments and held in place by two shoulder pieces. Each shoulder piece bore a single onyx stone engraved with the names of six of the twelve tribes of Israel, so that the High Priest carried the whole people symbolically on his shoulders whenever he entered the sanctuary to serve. A woven band of the same materials, attached at the waist, secured the garment to the body.

The specificity of the biblical description, naming exact materials and construction rather than describing the garment only in general terms, is unusual among ancient Near Eastern ritual dress as it survives in text, and it is this description in the Hebrew Bible itself that is the primary source for everything known about the ephod's appearance, since no example survives archaeologically. Later Jewish and Christian commentators debated at length exactly how the ephod was cut and fastened, since the biblical text, though detailed by ancient standards, still leaves some construction questions open to interpretation, and no two historical reconstructions agree on every point.