Pomegranates in the Bible: Exodus 28 and the Hem
Short answer: In Exodus 28:33-35, God commands that the hem of the high priest's robe be decorated with pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet, with gold bells between them and around them. The pomegranates were woven figures, not real fruit, and they hung alongside the bells so that the priest would make a sound when he entered and left the Holy Place, so that he would not die. The pomegranate was also a fruit of the promised land, named in Deuteronomy 8:8 among the good things God gave Israel, and it appeared in Solomon's temple as carved ornament. So the pomegranate in Scripture is chiefly a picture of fruitfulness and beauty attached to the place where God meets his people, not a magical charm or a hidden code.
What Exodus 28:33-35 actually commands
Exodus 28 gives the instructions for the garments of Aaron and his sons. The robe of the ephod was the blue garment worn under the ephod, and its lower hem was to be decorated. The text says, "On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, all around its hem; with bells of gold between and around them" (Exodus 28:33). The colors are the same three colors used throughout the tabernacle fabrics and the priestly garments, so the hem matched the rest of the sacred furnishings rather than standing out as something foreign.
The pomegranates were woven or embroidered figures, not actual fruit sewn onto cloth. The word describes an ornamental shape, and the pattern alternated: pomegranate, bell, pomegranate, bell, all the way around the hem. The bells were gold, and the pomegranates were colored thread. Together they formed a border that would have been visible and audible as the priest moved. The command is precise about placement, about color, and about the fact that the bells were between the pomegranates, not merely scattered near them.
The reason given is in verse 35: the sound would be heard when Aaron went into the Holy Place before Yahweh and when he came out, so that he would not die. This is a sobering detail. The high priest did not enter casually. The bells announced his movement, and the pomegranates marked the hem of the one who approached. The passage does not explain every symbol; it simply commands the garment and states the purpose. We should be careful not to read more into the ornament than the text itself gives us.
What we can say is that the hem of the priest's robe was not plain. It was decorated with fruit and sound. The priest who represented the people before God wore a garment whose lowest edge carried the image of the pomegranate, a fruit associated elsewhere in Scripture with the abundance of the land. The detail is small, but it is not accidental. God specified it, and the text records it as part of the instructions Moses received on the mountain.
The pomegranate as fruit of the promised land
When Moses described the land Israel was about to inherit, he listed its produce. Deuteronomy 8:8 calls it "a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey." The pomegranate is named alongside wheat, barley, grapes, figs, olives, and honey—staple crops and sweet things. It is part of the picture of a good land, a land that provides. The pomegranate is not a rare luxury in this list; it is one of the ordinary good gifts of a fertile country.
This matters for reading Exodus 28. The fruit on the priest's hem is the fruit of the land God promised. The priest wore, as it were, a reminder of the good land and its produce as he ministered. The tabernacle stood in the wilderness, but the garment looked forward to the inheritance. The pomegranate tied the worship of the wilderness generation to the fields and orchards they had not yet entered. It was a small, woven pledge of the land that was coming.
The spies who scouted the land brought back evidence of its bounty. Numbers 13:23 says, "They came to the valley of Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore it on a staff between two. They also brought some of the pomegranates and figs." The pomegranate appears here as one of the samples of the land's goodness. Along with grapes and figs, it was carried back to show the people what awaited them. The report of the fruit was true even though the report of the people's fear was not.
So the pomegranate carries a double association in the Old Testament: it is an ornament on the priestly garment, and it is a fruit of the land. Both point in the same direction—toward the goodness of God's provision and the nearness of his presence with his people. The fruit is not treated as sacred in itself, and no law forbids eating it. It is simply one of the good things God gave, and it was fitting to weave its likeness into the hem of the garment worn by the one who drew near to God on Israel's behalf.
Pomegranates in Solomon's temple
The pomegranate reappears in the construction of Solomon's temple. In 1 Kings 7, the account describes the two bronze pillars and the network of interwoven chains that covered their capitals. The text says in 1 Kings 7:18, "So he made the pillars; and there were two rows around on the one network, to cover the capitals that were on the top of the pillars: and he did so for the other capital." The surrounding verses describe pomegranates arranged around the capitals, two hundred in rows, carved as part of the ornament of the pillars.
This is a significant continuity. The pomegranate that hung on the hem of the priest's robe is now carved into the architecture of the temple. The same fruit shape that marked the garment of the one who entered the Holy Place marks the pillars that stood at the entrance of the house of God. The temple was the permanent dwelling place of God's name, and its ornament echoed the tabernacle's imagery. The pomegranate was not a one-time detail; it became part of the visual vocabulary of Israel's worship.
The pillars were named. One was called Jachin and the other Boaz, and they stood at the porch of the temple. The pomegranates around their capitals were decorative, but they were not meaningless. They continued the theme of fruitfulness at the place of approach. A worshipper coming to the temple would pass between pillars adorned with the fruit of the land, a visual reminder that he was coming to the God who gives good things and who had brought his people into a land flowing with milk and honey.
We should be honest that the text does not spell out a symbolic meaning for every pomegranate. It records what was made. But the pattern is consistent: the pomegranate belongs to the furnishings and garments of worship. It is attached to the place where God meets his people, and it is connected to the land he gave them. That is enough to teach us something about how Scripture uses ordinary created things to point to spiritual realities without turning them into idols.
Why the bells were between the pomegranates
The command in Exodus 28:34-35 places the bells between the pomegranates, and the stated purpose is sound. Verse 35 says the sound would be heard when Aaron entered and left the Holy Place, so that he would not die. The bell was not music for its own sake; it was a signal. The high priest moved in a space that was closed to everyone else, and the sound marked his movement before God. The pomegranate and the bell worked together: fruit and sound, beauty and warning.
Some readers have turned this into a superstition, imagining that the priest had to keep the bells ringing to survive. But the text does not say that. It says the sound was to be heard, and the purpose was that he not die. The garment was part of the reverence required for approaching God. The danger was real because God is holy, and the priest was a sinner representing sinners. The bells were a means appointed by God, not a magical safeguard. The obedience was in making the garment as God commanded and in wearing it as he entered.
The pomegranates between the bells may have served to separate them and to give the hem its ordered appearance. The alternation was deliberate. God did not leave the design to human preference. This is a theme that runs through the tabernacle instructions: God specifies the materials, the colors, the dimensions, and the arrangement. Worship is not invented by the worshipper; it is received from God. The hem is a small case study in that principle, and it applies to every part of the service of God's house.
For Christian readers, the book of Hebrews explains that the old priesthood and its garments were a shadow. The high priest who entered with bells and pomegranates pointed forward to a greater high priest who entered once for all. The sound of the bells has ceased because the sacrifice is finished and the priest has sat down. The pomegranate on the hem is a detail in a system that has been fulfilled, not a ritual we now reproduce. We read it with gratitude, not with imitation.
What the pomegranate teaches about fruitfulness
The pomegranate is a fruit full of seeds, and in many cultures it has been a symbol of abundance and fertility. The Bible does not explicitly draw that lesson from the fruit, and we should not build doctrine on what Scripture does not say. What Scripture does give us is the pomegranate as a good fruit of a good land, named among the blessings of Deuteronomy 8:8. It is a picture of provision, of a land that yields food, of a God who gives his people a place to live and eat.
That picture has a natural application. Jesus taught that a tree is known by its fruit, and the New Testament repeatedly calls believers to bear fruit. The pomegranate on the priest's hem can remind us that the worship of God and the fruitfulness of his people belong together. The priest wore the fruit of the land as he ministered. The Christian is called to live a life that produces the fruit of the Spirit, not as ornament but as evidence of a living faith. The image is fitting even though the Bible does not press it into an allegory.
We should also resist the temptation to turn the pomegranate into a code. Some popular teaching assigns hidden meanings to the number of seeds, the shape of the crown, or the colors of the threads. Exodus does not do this. The colors are the standard tabernacle colors, and the shape is simply the shape of a pomegranate. The value of the symbol is in its plain connection to the land and to the place of worship. Where the text is silent, we should be silent too, and where it speaks, we should listen carefully.
Fruitfulness in Scripture is finally a gift of God, not an achievement of man. The land produced pomegranates because God made it good. The priest wore the woven fruit because God commanded it. The believer bears fruit because he remains in Christ. The pomegranate, read within the whole counsel of God, points us away from itself to the God who gives every good thing, and it calls us to a life that shows forth his praise in visible, ordinary ways.
Pomegranates and the Song of Solomon
The pomegranate also appears in the Song of Solomon, where it is used as an image of beauty and love. The beloved's cheeks are compared to a slice of pomegranate, and the garden imagery of the book includes pomegranates among its fruits. This is not a different fruit with a different meaning; it is the same created thing used in poetry to describe delight and beauty. The Song celebrates human love within the good world God made, and the pomegranate is part of that celebration.
Reading the Song well requires care. It is love poetry, and it uses the imagery of the land—vines, figs, pomegranates, spices—to describe the beauty of the beloved. The pomegranate here is one of the pleasant things of creation, used to praise what is lovely. The book does not turn the fruit into a doctrine; it uses the fruit the way a poet uses a garden. The same fruit that hung on the priest's hem is here a picture of the beauty of love, which shows how wide the biblical use of ordinary things can be.
Some interpreters read the Song as an allegory of Christ and the church, and others read it as wisdom literature about human love. Faithful Christians differ on this, and we should acknowledge that difference rather than pretend it is settled. Either way, the pomegranate in the Song belongs to the world of created beauty that God made and called good. It is not a secret symbol with a hidden key. It is the fruit of the land, used to describe delight.
The connection between the priestly pomegranate and the poetic pomegranate is simply this: the Bible uses the same created things across many kinds of writing. A fruit can adorn a garment and can describe a cheek. It can be a sign of the land's goodness and a word of praise for the beloved. Scripture is not a codebook; it is a library of books that speak in different ways about the one God who made the world and gives good gifts to his people.
How to read symbolic details in the Old Testament
Exodus 28 is a good place to learn a method. First, read what the text commands and what it says the purpose is. The pomegranates are commanded, and the purpose of the bells is stated: so that the priest not die. Second, read the passage in its context, in the book and in the whole canon. The pomegranate is elsewhere a fruit of the land and an ornament of the temple. Third, distinguish what is stated from what is suggested. The text does not tell us that the pomegranate means fertility, or resurrection, or anything else in this passage. We may notice resonances, but we should not preach them as if they were the plain meaning.
This method protects us from two errors. One is ignoring the details, as if the hem of the robe did not matter. It did matter; God commanded it, and he gave a reason for the bells. The other error is overloading the details, treating every color and shape as a puzzle to be solved. The Bible is not a riddle. It is a revelation, and it is clear enough to be understood and obeyed. The pomegranate is a real detail with real meaning, but its meaning is found in what the text says, not in what we invent.
For the Christian, the whole sacrificial system is read in light of Christ. He is the high priest who entered the true tabernacle, and he is the sacrifice that the system foreshadowed. The pomegranates and bells are part of the shadow that has passed away. We do not wear them, and we do not need them. But we read them with profit because they show us the care God took in preparing the way for his Son and the seriousness with which he calls us to approach him.
The hem of the robe, then, is a small window into a large truth. God is holy. He provides a way of approach. He gives good gifts, pictured in the fruit of the land. He is faithful to the details, and he is faithful to his people. The pomegranate is a reminder of all of that, and it invites us to read the whole Bible with the same attention and the same reverence that the text itself demands.
Biblical fidelity check
What Exodus 28:33-35 establishes is this: God commanded pomegranate figures in blue, purple, and scarlet on the hem of the high priest's robe, with gold bells between them, and the stated purpose was that the sound be heard when he entered and left the Holy Place so that he would not die. What the passage does not establish is that the pomegranate had a specific redemptive meaning such as atonement, resurrection, or the church. It does not say the fruit was magical, and it does not command any ritual use of real pomegranates. The text gives the design and the purpose of the bells, and it leaves the rest in the realm of what Scripture elsewhere connects to the fruit: the goodness of the promised land and the ornament of the temple.
A common misreading is to turn the pomegranate into a hidden code, assigning to it a fixed symbolic meaning that the text never states, and then using that invented meaning to teach doctrine. That is wrong because it adds to Scripture and makes the reader's imagination the authority instead of the text. Another misreading is to treat the bells as a superstitious safeguard, as if the sound itself kept the priest alive. The text says the sound was to be heard so that he would not die, which is a command to obey, not a charm to manipulate. The right reading receives what is given, sees the shadow pointing to Christ, and refuses to build on silence.
Other passages that speak to Exodus 28:33-35
Several related studies help place this priestly detail in the wider biblical story. The pomegranate's poetic use in the Song of Solomon is explored in Song of Solomon Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in Song of Solomon, and its imagery of beauty and love is treated in Song of Solomon 1: Love, Longing, and Beauty. The garden and springtime imagery that includes pomegranates is discussed in Song of Solomon 2: Love's Springtime and Invitation, and the themes of seeking and finding are developed in Seeking and Finding Love in Song of Solomon 3. These studies show how the Bible uses the same created things in law, prophecy, and poetry without turning them into a code.
Frequently asked questions
What did pomegranates symbolize on the high priest's robe?
The text does not assign a fixed symbolic meaning to the pomegranates in Exodus 28:33-35. It commands their color and placement and says the bells were for sound. Elsewhere the pomegranate is a fruit of the promised land, named in Deuteronomy 8:8, and it appears as carved ornament in Solomon's temple. The safest reading is that the fruit of the land adorned the garment of the one who approached God on Israel's behalf. We should not invent a meaning the passage never states.
Why were there bells between the pomegranates?
The purpose is stated plainly: the sound was to be heard when Aaron entered and left the Holy Place, so that he would not die. The bells marked the movement of the high priest as he approached God in the space no one else could enter. They were not a magical charm; they were part of the reverence God required. The pomegranates separated the bells and gave the hem its ordered, commanded appearance.
Do pomegranates still have a role in Christian worship today?
No. The pomegranates on the priestly robe belonged to the old covenant system that pointed forward to Christ. Hebrews teaches that the old priesthood and its furnishings were a shadow of the greater high priest who entered once for all. Christians are not commanded to wear or display pomegranates in worship. We read the detail with gratitude because it shows the care God took in preparing the way for his Son.
