Brown Is Not in the Bible — but the Ground Names the First Man

Brown is not a colour word in the Bible. But the most important brown thing in Scripture is there on the first page, and the first man is named after it.

The word that is not there

Biblical Hebrew has a small colour vocabulary and it names materials and dyes rather than points on a spectrum. There is no term for brown.

The King James does use the word, in Genesis 30, for the sheep Jacob separates from Laban’s flock. The Hebrew is chum, which appears only in that passage and means something like dark or dusky. Modern versions read “dark-coloured.”

One obscure word, in one bargaining scene about livestock. That is the whole of brown in Scripture.

The ground

What is everywhere is earth, and the Bible is not casual about it.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)

The Hebrew is a pun that English cannot carry. The man is adam and the ground is adamah. He is named after the stuff he is made of, the way we might call someone Clay.

And the sentence at the end of the judgment returns to it: for dust you are and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:19).

The word is repeated at funerals in most of the Western world, which is a long afterlife for a line about soil.

What Scripture does with dust

It goes in two directions and holds both.

It is the language of insignificance. Abraham, bargaining with God over Sodom, calls himself nothing but dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27). Job sits in it.

And it is the language of care. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13-14)

He remembers that we are dust. The same fact that makes us small is given as the reason for the compassion, which is not the logic most religion runs on.

The potter

The image of worked earth recurs, and the best version is not the comfortable one.

Jeremiah is sent to a potter’s house to watch, and what he sees is a failure: But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. (Jeremiah 18:4)

The first attempt goes wrong. The clay is not thrown out.

Isaiah puts it as a prayer: Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. (Isaiah 64:8)

And Paul, on why any of it holds together: But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)

Cheap containers, deliberately. The point of the packaging is that nobody mistakes it for the contents.

The other brown thing

Sackcloth, worn in mourning and repentance, was made of coarse goat hair and was dark. It is the one garment colour Scripture repeatedly specifies by material, and it always means the same thing: someone has stopped caring how they look because something worse has happened.

Jonah’s Nineveh puts it on, including, in a detail the book seems to enjoy, the animals (Jonah 3:8).

Frequently asked

Is brown mentioned in the Bible?

Not as a colour term. The King James uses it in Genesis 30 for Jacob’s sheep, translating chum, a rare word meaning dark or dusky.

Why are there so few colours in Hebrew?

Its colour vocabulary is small and tends to name dyes and materials — the blue, purple and crimson of the tabernacle are all substances.

What does dust symbolise in the Bible?

Both insignificance and the ground of compassion. Psalm 103:14 gives “he remembers that we are dust” as the reason for God’s pity.

What is the pun in Genesis 2:7?

The man is adam and the ground is adamah. He is named after the material he is made from.