What does the Bible mean by a scarlet letter?
A "scarlet letter" is a badge of shame — a sin marked in red so that everyone can see it. The Bible uses the same colour for the same reason, but it puts the word in a sentence no human court ever says: the God who names the stain is the God offering to take it out.
The Colour and Its Dye
Scarlet in the Hebrew text is not an abstract idea. It is a specific, expensive dye, and its source explains why it stands for something that will not wash out.
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe word most often translated "scarlet" is shani, and it is frequently paired with the word tolaath, "worm or grub," which seems to show that the colour was obtained from an insect, as it is now from cochineal. Scarlet was much used in the needlework and hangings of the tabernacle, alongside blue and purple.
One writer notices that the word may carry the sense of a second dipping, and draws a line from the colour of splendour to the colour of guilt.
Samuel RidoutThe full word for scarlet is Tolaath shani, "scarlet worm." It is possible that shani, scarlet, means "double," referring to the double dye which makes the scarlet. It is very suggestive that the pride and glory of man are closely connected with the double dye of sin.
A Mark on Public Display
The point of a scarlet letter is visibility. That is exactly the force of the word here — and exactly what God undertakes to reverse.
An Outline of Sound WordsThe sins of His people may be as scarlet, clear for everyone to see, but He can make them "white as snow," so that they are no longer seen. They may be purified, but He is able to make the heart pure. The secret of the divine power for this moral cleansing is not given here; it awaited the coming of God's Son, and His great work of propitiation on the cross.
Not Only a Debt — a Stain
Why a colour at all, rather than a number or a charge? Because sin does two things, and this verse speaks to the second.
Edward DennettSin may be viewed in two ways: either as an offence against God, or as defilement to the sinner. God has His sovereign rights and claims over all His creatures, and that is what makes sin a wrong done to Him, an outrage against His majesty and glory. Sin in this aspect needs forgiveness… But sin is also, in its very essence and nature, defiling and polluting; and it is to this that the striking appeal in the prophet Isaiah refers.
Nothing You Own Will Wash It Out
Fast dye resists scrubbing. So the offer of Isaiah 1:18 has to come from outside the person wearing the mark, and Scripture rules out every home remedy.
Edward DennettIt is the only means of cleansing from guilt. This is the divinely appointed and divinely given way, and so it excludes every other method. "Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord GOD" (Jer. 2:22). "If I wash myself with snow and cleanse my hands with lye, yet you will plunge me into a pit, and my own clothes will abhor me" (Job 9:30-31). It is only the blood of Christ which can make the sinner whiter than snow.
Whiter Than the Snow Itself
Snow is chosen as the opposite of scarlet for a reason, and one writer presses the picture further: the whiteness is borrowed light.
Samuel RidoutHe is light, and the snow reflecting the sunlight suggests how completely His essential righteousness is displayed in that work of redemption which enables Him to say, "though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Isa. 1:18). Sins that once cried out for vengeance now, through the precious blood of Christ, reflect the glory of God's character! "It was to show His righteousness… so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26).
The Scarlet That Saved a House
There is one more turn. Elsewhere in Scripture scarlet is not the label of the guilty but the sign that shelters them. Rahab, a woman of Jericho, hung a scarlet cord from her window before the city fell.
Numerical Bible NotesThe line of scarlet thread by which she lets them down out of the window is bound in the window as a sign — not to herself, of course, but to the messengers of judgment when they come — that judgment is not to fall on anyone in that sheltered house… The "scarlet" was in fact made from the blood of an insect, the "worm" of Psalm 22, and in this way how plain the reference to the Lord is!
Summary
- Scarlet names it. The word comes from a worm-dye, possibly a double dipping — a colour chosen because it is fixed, costly and impossible to miss.
- Scarlet exposes it. Sin is not only a debt owed to God but a defilement in the sinner, on show for all to see.
- Scarlet defeats you. Lye, soap and snow-water are named in Scripture and dismissed; no self-cleaning removes a stain God can still see.
- Scarlet is answered. God does not lower the standard; He makes the guilty as white as snow through the blood of Christ, and stays just while doing it.
- Scarlet becomes shelter. The colour that condemned hung in Rahab's window as the token that judgment would pass her house by — the mark of shame turned into the sign of safety.