Woven Reminders: The Fringes of the Covenant Text: Deuteronomy 22:12
Introduction: The Fabric of Obedience
We live in an age that despises boundaries, distinctions, and reminders of authority. Our culture is dedicated to the great project of erasure, blurring every line God has drawn in His creation and in His Word. We are told that freedom is found in autonomy, in casting off all external constraints and definitions. But this is a lie from the pit. True freedom is not found in being your own god; it is found in being God's creature, joyfully living within the glorious pattern He has designed. This is why the modern mind finds so many of the laws in Deuteronomy to be perplexing, if not offensive. They seem arbitrary, fussy, and altogether strange.
But God is never arbitrary. Every one of His commandments, down to the very threads on a garment, is packed with theological meaning. These laws were given to Israel to make them a distinct people, a walking, talking billboard for the character of the one true God in a world awash with pagan chaos. The surrounding nations lived in a world where the gods were capricious, the rituals were orgiastic, and the lines between the sacred and profane, male and female, human and animal, were deliberately and destructively blurred. Into this confusion, God gives His law, a law that orders everything, from worship to agriculture to clothing.
The command in our text today, to make tassels on the corners of their garments, is one of those laws that can seem trivial to us. But it is anything but. It is a command about memory, identity, and the constant, everyday reality of the covenant. It is about weaving the law of God into the very fabric of your life, so that every time you get dressed, every time you walk, every time you feel the sway of your cloak, you are reminded of who you are and to whom you belong. This is not about external show; it is about internal formation. And as we will see, this small command about threads on a garment has everything to do with the righteousness of Christ that clothes us now.
The Text
"You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of your garment with which you cover yourself."
(Deuteronomy 22:12 LSB)
A Tangible Theology (v. 12)
Let us consider the text before us:
"You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of your garment with which you cover yourself." (Deuteronomy 22:12)
This command does not stand alone. It is part of a section of laws that all have to do with maintaining God's created distinctions. The immediate preceding verse forbids wearing a garment of mixed wool and linen. A few verses before that, a man is forbidden from wearing a woman's garment, and a woman a man's. Before that, an ox and a donkey are not to be yoked together. God is a God of order, and He creates by separating and distinguishing. Light from darkness, land from sea, man from woman. This command about tassels is part of that same worldview. It is a way of marking out, of making distinct.
The instruction is straightforward. The typical outer garment was a rectangular piece of cloth, a cloak that served as a coat by day and a blanket by night. On the four corners of this garment, the Israelite was to make tassels, or fringes. The parallel passage in Numbers 15 gives us more detail. There, God explains the purpose of these tassels, or tzitzit. "And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after" (Numbers 15:39). They were also to include a blue thread in the tassel, the color of the sky, a reminder of the heavens and of God's throne.
So, this was a divinely appointed memory aid. We are forgetful creatures. We are prone to wander, Lord, we feel it. Our hearts are idol factories, and our eyes are constantly looking for some forbidden fruit to enjoy. God, in His mercy, gives His people a tangible, physical, everyday reminder of His law. Every time they saw these fringes on their own clothes, or on their neighbor's clothes, it was to be a call back to covenant faithfulness. It was a constant, low-grade sermon preached by their own wardrobe.
This tells us something profound about how God deals with us. He does not just give us abstract principles. He condescends to our weakness. He gives us sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are visible words. He gives us the Scriptures, a physical book. And here, He gives Israel physical threads. Our faith is not a disembodied, gnostic spirituality. It is an earthy, robust, full-bodied faith that engages all our senses. The tassels were to be seen, to be touched, to be a constant presence. They were to remind the Israelite that his entire life, from his heart to the hem of his garment, belonged to Yahweh.
The Corners of the World and the Corruption of the Heart
Notice the command specifies "the four corners." This is significant. The number four in Scripture often points to the earth, to the four corners of the world, the four winds. This garment, which covered the man, was a kind of microcosm of his world. By placing the reminders of the covenant at the four corners, God was staking His claim over the whole man, and over the whole of his life in the world. There is no corner of your life that is outside of God's jurisdiction. Your business dealings, your family life, your private thoughts, your public reputation, all of it is to be brought under the authority of God's Word.
The tassels were a call to remember the law. But as with any external sign, the human heart is adept at corrupting it. The sign can become a substitute for the reality. This is precisely what Jesus condemned in the Pharisees. He says of them, "They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long" (Matthew 23:5). The Pharisees had taken God's gracious reminder and turned it into a tool for self-righteous peacocking. They lengthened their tassels not to remember God's law, but to make sure everyone else remembered how lawful they were.
This is the constant danger for the religious man. It is the temptation to be content with the uniform of piety while the heart is in full rebellion. It is the temptation to think that because you have a fish on your car and a large Bible on your coffee table, you are right with God. But God has always desired truth in the inward parts. The tassels were meant to drive the law inward, into the heart. The Pharisees used them to keep the law at arm's length, as a mere external show. They honored God with their hems, but their hearts were far from Him.
This does not mean the command was bad. The command was good. The problem was not the tassel; the problem was the heart. The law is good if one uses it lawfully. The Pharisees used it unlawfully, for their own glory. We must take this warning to heart. Our obedience, our church attendance, our doctrinal precision, can all become long tassels that we swing about for our own honor. But God is not impressed.
The Fulfillment in Christ
So, how does a Christian, living under the New Covenant, relate to a command like this? Are we to go out and sew tassels on our jackets? The answer is no, because the reality to which the tassel pointed has come in the person of Jesus Christ. All the ceremonial and civil laws of the Old Testament find their fulfillment, their culmination, in Him.
Think of the woman with the issue of blood in the gospels. For twelve years she had been ceremonially unclean, an outcast. In desperation, she pushes through the crowd, saying to herself, "If I only touch His garment, I will be made well." And what part of the garment did she touch? The Greek word is kraspedon, which is the same word used in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, for the tassels. She reached out and touched the hem, the fringe, the tassel of His garment (Matthew 9:20-22).
And what happened? Power went out from Him, and she was healed. This was not magic. This was a beautiful picture of what Christ came to do. The tassels represented the law of God, all 613 commandments according to the rabbis. For every other Israelite, the tassels were a reminder of the law they constantly broke. They were a reminder of their failure, their sin, their spiritual uncleanness. But here was one man, Jesus Christ, who kept the whole law perfectly. He was the embodiment of the law. And so, when this unclean woman touches the symbol of the law on the garment of the one man who perfectly fulfilled the law, she is not struck down for her presumption. Instead of her uncleanness defiling Him, His perfect righteousness cleanses her.
Clothed in Righteousness
The tassels were a reminder to be holy. But they could not make a man holy. They pointed to a standard that no fallen man could meet. But Christ did meet it. He is our holiness. The tassels were a covering for Israel, a sign of their covenant identity. But Christ is our covering. In the gospel, we are told to be clothed in Him. "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Galatians 3:27).
The Old Covenant saint had the law on the edge of his cloak. The New Covenant saint has the Lawgiver Himself clothing his very soul. The righteousness that the tassels called for is given to us as a free gift through faith in Jesus. His perfect obedience is imputed to our account. We are wrapped not in a garment with reminders of the law, but in the very performance of the law, the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Does this mean we can now live lawlessly? God forbid. It means we now have the power to obey from the heart. The tassels were an external reminder. But in the new covenant, God writes His law not on our garments, but on our hearts. "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33). The Holy Spirit is our indwelling reminder, our ever-present guide, conforming us to the image of Christ.
So, the principle of the tassels remains. We are to fill our lives with constant reminders of God's truth and our identity in Christ. We do this by immersing ourselves in the Scriptures, by faithful participation in the life of the church, by prayer, by fellowship with the saints. We are to structure our lives, our homes, and our days in such a way that we are constantly bumping into the truth of the gospel. We are to be a distinct people, marked out not by threads of blue, but by lives of joyful, grateful obedience to the one who touched us in our uncleanness and clothed us in His perfect righteousness.