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Summary
- Orange is not in the Bible — not the colour and not the fruit. English had no word for it until the fruit supplied one in the sixteenth century.
- Biblical Hebrew’s colour vocabulary is small and names dyes and materials rather than points on a spectrum, so the question is asked in a vocabulary the text does not have.
- The nearest things are objects: carnelian, the reddish-orange stone first in the high priest’s breastpiece (Exodus 28:17) and in the city’s foundations (Revelation 21:20) — and fire.
- The stones mattered for what was written on them: Aaron bore the tribes’ names over his heart whenever he entered the Holy Place (Exodus 28:29).
- Revelation 6:8’s horse is chloros, a yellowish green — the colour of something no longer alive, which no English word quite carries.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Scripture quotations from the NIV via BibleGateway (Exodus 28:17, 29; Deuteronomy 8:8; Malachi 3:2; Revelation 6:8; 21:20). The identification of the first breastpiece stone as carnelian, and the King James “sardius”, are noted in most modern versions. The Greek chloros and the late entry of “orange” into English as a colour term follow standard lexicons and etymological references, as does the late arrival of citrus in the Mediterranean.
