# What Does Emerald Mean in the Bible? Six Verses and a Rainbow

Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/emeralds-in-the-bible/
Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/)
Published: 2024-05-24
Updated: 2026-10-27

The King James Bible names the emerald six times and never gives the stone a meaning of its own. Its finest setting is the rainbow "like unto an emerald" round God's throne, the sign of his covenant with Noah shining where he rules. It also shines in the high priest's breastplate, in Tyre and in the new Jerusalem.

And the best place it is set is the throne. John is taken up in the Spirit, and before any seal is broken or any trumpet sounds, he sees "a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne," and "there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald" (Revelation 4:2–3). We cannot hear the word rainbow without hearing Noah. "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth" (Genesis 9:13). The promise God made over a drowned world is the first thing John sees around the One who rules it, and it is green.

## Where is the emerald mentioned in the Bible?

Here are all six, as the King James Version has them. "Emerald" comes five times and "emeralds" once.

- **Exodus 28:18 and 39:11.** The breastplate the high priest wore over his heart held twelve stones in four rows, and "the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond." Chapter 39 tells how the craftsmen made it.
- **Ezekiel 27:16.** In the prophet's lament over the trading city of Tyre, Syria "occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate."
- **Ezekiel 28:13.** The king of Tyre is pictured in Eden, where "every precious stone was thy covering," the emerald among them, before "thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty" (Ezekiel 28:17) and he is cast down.
- **Revelation 4:3.** The rainbow round the throne, "in sight like unto an emerald."
- **Revelation 21:19.** The foundations of the new Jerusalem's wall: "the first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald."

Catholic Bibles have their own list. The Douay-Rheims, the classic English Catholic translation, says "emerald" in eight verses. It sets the emerald in the breastplate's first row rather than its second (Exodus 28:17; 39:10), keeps Ezekiel 28:13 and the two in Revelation, has none at Ezekiel 27:16, and adds three from Tobit, Judith and Sirach, books found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. Among them is Tobit's song of the restored city: "The gates of Jerusalem shall be built of sapphire, and of emerald, and all the walls thereof round about of precious stones" (Tobit 13:21). The six above are for the King James Version without the Apocrypha. Other translations give other totals, for the reason the next question explains.

## Was the emerald in the Bible a real emerald?

In Revelation it very likely was a green stone; in Exodus and Ezekiel nobody can be sure. The Hebrew word the King James translators rendered "emerald" is *nophek*. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon suggests it was "perhaps = ruby or carbuncle," which is how the ancient Greek and Latin translations took it. The stone that the Greek Septuagint did call *smaragdos*, its word for emerald, sits one place earlier, at the end of the first row, where the King James Version has "a carbuncle." Brenton's English translation of the Septuagint reads the first row as "a sardius, a topaz, an emerald." The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia notes that the King James Version "interchanges the names" the Septuagint gave those two stones.

Modern Bibles have chosen differently again, and the same Hebrew word can turn up as an emerald in one and something else in the next:

| Hebrew word, place on the breastplate | KJV | NIV | NRSVue |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| *bareqeth*, row 1, stone 3 | carbuncle | beryl | emerald |
| *nophek*, row 2, stone 1 | emerald | turquoise | turquoise |
| *yahalom*, row 2, stone 3 | diamond | emerald | moonstone |

The NIV's own footnote is honest about it: "The precise identification of some of these precious stones is uncertain." Even the Greek word did not mean exactly what our jewelers mean. Pliny the Elder, writing about AD 77, gave the *smaragdus* the third rank among precious stones, after the *adamas* (usually taken to be the diamond) and pearls, and his 1855 translators note that "the Emerald, and various other green precious stones, were included under this name." So when John calls the rainbow *smaragdinos*, "of emerald," he very likely means a clear green, the "light green" that Thayer's lexicon gives the stone, whatever the mineral.

## Which tribe was the emerald on the breastplate?

Exodus does not say. It tells us only that "the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet; every one with his name shall they be according to the twelve tribes" (Exodus 28:21). The order of the names is given for the two onyx stones on the shoulders, "according to their birth" (Exodus 28:10), but not for the twelve stones of the breastplate. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the first century, describes the breastplate and says the names were engraved "in the order according to which they were born." His own list puts the emerald third. Read his way, the emerald carried the name of Levi, Leah's third son, while the stone the King James Version calls the emerald, the fourth, carried Judah's (Genesis 29:32–35). That is Josephus's reading, and a good early one, but it is not in Exodus, and it depends on which stone you call the emerald.

What Exodus does tell us is why the names were there: "Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the Lord continually" (Exodus 28:29). Every tribe went in with him.

## Why is the rainbow round God's throne like an emerald?

John does not explain it, and we should be slow to add a meaning he did not write. But he was steeped in the prophets, and the scene he describes had been seen before. Ezekiel, "among the captives by the river of Chebar" (Ezekiel 1:1), saw a throne "as the appearance of a sapphire stone," and around the one who sat on it, "as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord" (Ezekiel 1:26–28). Ezekiel fell on his face. John, centuries later, sees the same bright bow, and he sees it green.

And the bow is never only an ornament in Scripture. When God first set it in the cloud he said what it was for: "the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth" (Genesis 9:16). Notice who looks. The rainbow reminds God before it reminds us. In the next chapter a book "sealed with seven seals" lies in the hand of him that sat on the throne (Revelation 5:1), and in chapter 6 the seals begin to open. They open inside that circle of green. Whatever the seals hold, the throne they come from is ringed with mercy. There is more on the bow itself in [what the rainbow means in the Bible](https://christianpure.com/learn/rainbows-biblical-significance/).

## What does emerald green mean in the Bible?

The Bible never speaks of "emerald green" as a colour. Revelation compares the rainbow to the stone, and the stone is green, but Scripture attaches no lesson to the shade. Green in the Bible belongs mostly to living things: grass, leaves and the "green pastures" where the Lord who is our shepherd makes us lie down (Psalm 23:1–2). Pliny tells us why the ancients loved the emerald: "there is no stone, the colour of which is more delightful to the eye," and none that "feeds the sight without satiating it." That was what John's first readers would picture. The fuller story of green in Scripture is told in [what green means in the Bible](https://christianpure.com/learn/green-biblical-symbolism/).

## Which foundation of the new Jerusalem is an emerald?

The fourth of the twelve. John tells us what was written on those foundations: "the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Revelation 21:14). He does not pair a stone with an apostle, and no list that does so comes from him. The point is the whole wall. The city that comes down "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (Revelation 21:2) rests on the witness of twelve men, and every stone in it is precious. The prophet had promised the same to a broken city: "O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires" (Isaiah 54:11).

## Is Esmeralda a name in the Bible?

No. Esmeralda is the Spanish and Portuguese word for emerald, and Victor Hugo gave it as a name to the young Romani woman loved by Quasimodo in *The Hunchback of Notre-Dame* (1831). The name never appears in Scripture. Its root does: Esmeralda comes ultimately from the Greek *smaragdos*, the very word John uses for the fourth foundation of the holy city in Revelation 21:19. A girl named Esmeralda carries the name of a stone God chose for the walls of the new Jerusalem.

## Does dreaming of emeralds mean anything in the Bible?

No. The Bible gives no meaning for dreams of emeralds, or of any jewel. No one in Scripture dreams of one, and Scripture keeps no dictionary of dream images. When Pharaoh's servants told Joseph their dreams, he answered, "Do not interpretations belong to God?" (Genesis 40:8). The prophets warned against putting a dream on the same level as God's word: "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?" (Jeremiah 23:28). So if a dream of green stones stays with you, bring it to God in prayer and hold it up to Scripture, as Paul asks: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). [The Bible's verses about dreams](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-dreams/) are a good place to begin.

And if the emerald comes to mind at all, let it be the one John saw. The storms of this world are real, and Revelation does not hide them. But around the throne the bow still shines, and God has told us why it is there: "I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant" (Genesis 9:16).

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## Related reading

- [What Does the Rainbow Mean in the Bible? The Sign of God's Promise to Noah](https://christianpure.com/learn/rainbows-biblical-significance/)
- [What Green Means in the Bible: Alive, Not Envious](https://christianpure.com/learn/green-biblical-symbolism/)
- [Are Diamonds Mentioned in the Bible?](https://christianpure.com/learn/diamonds-bible/)
- [Jade Is Not in the Bible: A Precious Stone and the Gems of Scripture](https://christianpure.com/learn/is-jade-in-the-bible/)
- [What Do Pearls Mean in the Bible? The Kingdom Worth Everything](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-study-what-do-pearls-symbolize-in-the-bible/)

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