Phylacteries

Biblical Text

In the New Testament, phylacteries are mentioned once, in Matthew 23, in a passage where Jesus rebukes the hypocrisy (a merely outward show of faith) of the scribes and Pharisees. The King James Version renders the verse: "But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments" (Matthew 23:5). The Korean term for phylacteries, gyeongmun tti, literally means "scripture band," that is, a band containing verses of Scripture that is bound to the body.

Background

The practice is grounded in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Exodus 13:9, 16, Deuteronomy 6:8, and Deuteronomy 11:18 instruct that God's words be bound upon the hand as a sign and set between the eyes as frontlets. Judaism understood these commands as requiring literal observance. Accordingly, the four passages containing this command were written on parchment and placed inside small leather boxes. The four passages are Exodus 13:1–10, Exodus 13:11–16, Deuteronomy 6:4–9, and Deuteronomy 11:13–21. One box is bound to the forehead and the other to the arm with leather straps. In Hebrew they are called tefillin, and Jewish men are known to wear them during weekday morning prayers to this day. Phylactery cases and the parchment fragments they contained have also been found in the caves at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, showing that the practice already existed in the time of Jesus.

The Greek word in the original New Testament text, phylaktērion, originally meant "something that guards" or "something that protects." On the basis of this word, some hold that phylacteries were regarded as a kind of amulet. Judaism, however, explains them as a means of remembering and keeping the commandments.

Significance in Scripture as a Whole

In Matthew 23:5, Jesus does not take issue with the wearing of phylacteries as such. Rather, he rebukes the attitude of making them "broad" in order to appear pious before others. The same applies to the borders of garments mentioned in the same verse. The Old Testament intention that the Word be carried on the body points forward to the new covenant spoken of by Jeremiah—the promise that the law would be written on the heart. Paul described believers as an epistle written "not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Corinthians 3:3), and Christianity reads this verse in connection with engraving the Word upon the heart.

Interpretation and Debate

Traditions differ in how they read the Deuteronomic command to "bind them for a sign upon thine hand" and to set them "as frontlets between thine eyes." Rabbinic Judaism regards it as a literal command and makes and wears tefillin. By contrast, the Karaites, a movement within Judaism, are known to read it as a figurative expression meaning that the Word should be constantly remembered. Christianity generally regards the command as a form of ceremonial law (law concerning rituals such as sacrifice and purity) and understands its spirit as engraving the Word on the heart and in one's life. Hardly any Protestant denomination teaches the wearing of phylacteries as an ordinance for believers today.

In the Korean Church

In the Korean church, phylacteries are mentioned chiefly in sermons on Matthew 23, where they serve as an example warning against faith practiced for show, that is, hypocrisy. They are also sometimes explained, along with an introduction to the Jewish custom, when preachers address the command in Deuteronomy 6 to teach God's words in the home.