What Did Swaddling Clothes Look Like

The word appears in only two verses in the new testament and both times they appear in luke 2.

What did swaddling clothes look like.

The custom of the east was to wrap the new born in these strips of cloth after washing the body and anointing it in powdered salt. Swaddling clothes described in the bible consisted of a cloth tied together by bandage like strips. Other saints saw the swaddling clothes connected to jesus second coming at the end of time. The first appearance of sparganoo occurs in verse 7 and the second is in verse 12.

Many cultures still practice swaddling today. The biblical passage that refers to swaddling clothes is luke 2. Indeed that the lord jehovah would become flesh as a helpless child and was swaddled like any other infant is an exquisite manifestation of his unfathomable. After an infant was born the umbilical cord was cut and tied and then the baby was washed rubbed with salt and oil and wrapped with strips of cloth.

Meaning of the greek word swaddling clothes. Cyril of jerusalem in the 4th century made this connection while commentating on the book of daniel. Swaddling clothes according to every commentator i have read were bands of cloth probably cotton not really clothes as in a garment. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in.

Thus being wrapped in swaddling clothes even as an eternal heir apparent symbolizes and perhaps does so more than any other accoutrement of life one s entrance into full humanity.