There is no question that God loves the people of Israel. For more than 3,500 years, they have remained a distinctive people. God promised Abraham that He would give him and his descendants the entire Canaan region, where they currently reside as strangers. They will always own it, and I will be their god (Gen. 17:8 NLT).

The ancient, cuneiform-written language of Assyria and Babylonia was an eastern Semitic tongue called Akkadian. Triangular elements with a thin wedge shape made up cuneiform writing. Blue and purple Akkadian, Arabic, Ehiopic, Hebrew, and Phoenician were all members of the Afroasiatic language family, which also included the Semitic language. Canaan is a word that can be translated as “purple” in Akkadian.

The dye industry that once thrived there may have given the region that became Israel its name. The purple dye was the most expensive colour. It is actually a reddish-purple hue known in Hebrew as “argaman.” Some even claim it is red. Consider the rainbow’s red and purple mixture.

Both this and the “royal blue” were produced using mollusks or whelks that were discovered along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Along the coasts of northern Israel and Lebanon, the Canaanites engaged in snail fishing to obtain the snails that produced this dye. Tyre developed into a significant hub for the manufacture of this colour. To the point where the colour is now referred to as “Tyrian purple.”

For more than 3,000 years, the dye business was a significant industry, and the two colours argaman and royal blue (tekhelet), which were mentioned above, were connected to aristocracy. The fact that they were so expensive and challenging to produce is one of the main causes. According to the Jewish Jewels newsletter (August 2010), “10,000 sea snails’ secretions were used to make one gramme of dye. In spite of being resistant to most acids, soap, and alkalis, the purple colour was remarkably stable.

The Tabernacle featured argaman alongside blues and reds. When Mordecai was honoured in the book of Esther for saving the king’s life, he was dressed in argaman-style royal garb (Est. 8:15). Proverbs 31 describes the virtue of the woman as wearing argaman (Prov. 31:22).

Purple has a long history of being connected to royalty. Similar to how Canaan was referred to as the “land of purple.” Israel was undoubtedly home to royalty.