I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God.
The declaration that the Lord is God who brought His people out of the land of Egypt to be their God means He delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage in a miraculous manner to make them a holy, commandment-keeping people who keep the law of the ten commandments. To mark that identity He gave them a very simple peculiarity of dress with a ribbon of blue. By it they were to be distinguished from the idolatrous nations around them and to be known as soon as seen as the people God brought out of Egypt. Looking upon that distinction was to keep them remembering the high claims of Jehovah and doing all His commandments. It was to keep them from serving their own desires and from following their own unsanctified hearts and eyes into whoring after the world.
That remembrance also meant not imitating idolatrous practices and not mingling with other nations in drunken feasts and in eating swine's flesh and luxurious food detrimental to health. The dress command in itself had no direct effect on health except as God would bless obedience to it. The same requirement stands now for God's peculiar people to come out from the world, forsake idolatrous practices, and remain a distinct and separate people. This is to be done by a simple, healthful reform in dress, which is essential to physical and mental health.
The declaration that the Lord is God who brought His people out of the land of Egypt to be their God means He delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage in a miraculous manner to make them a holy, commandment-keeping people who keep the law of the ten commandments. To mark that identity He gave them a very simple peculiarity of dress with a ribbon of blue. By it they were to be distinguished from the idolatrous nations around them and to be known as soon as seen as the people God brought out of Egypt. Looking upon that distinction was to keep them remembering the high claims of Jehovah and doing all His commandments. It was to keep them from serving their own desires and from following their own unsanctified hearts and eyes into whoring after the world.
That remembrance also meant not imitating idolatrous practices and not mingling with other nations in drunken feasts and in eating swine's flesh and luxurious food detrimental to health. The dress command in itself had no direct effect on health except as God would bless obedience to it. The same requirement stands now for God's peculiar people to come out from the world, forsake idolatrous practices, and remain a distinct and separate people. This is to be done by a simple, healthful reform in dress, which is essential to physical and mental health.