SHADE, SHADOW (צֵל, H7498, defense, shadow, is the normal OT word; there is also צַלְמָ֫וֶת, H7516, grave, calamity, and tr. shadow of death by KJV and RSV. Greek has σκία, shade or adumbration). Most Biblical references are fig.: only twice does an actual shadow play a significant part in the narrative—when Hezekiah asked that the shadow on the sundial might reverse its normal direction of movement, as a sign from God (2 Kings 20:10), and when the sick were brought into the streets so that the shadow of Peter might fall on them as he passed (Acts 5:15).
The innumerable fig. references make use of an image which, like so much of the Bible’s imagery, is drawn straight from the Middle Eastern environment. In a land of heat and violent storms the need for shelter would be readily apparent and, since much of the land was treeless, it was, more often than not, in the shade of a rock or crag that the shelter was to be found.
Figurative references to the shadow fall into three main groups. (1) Uses indicating the ephemeral nature of things, or their lack of substance (e.g. 1 Chron 29:15; Job 8:9; Pss 102:11; 144:4). By contrast, however, with the fleeting existence of man, God is eternal and unchanging. He does not alter His position or inclination as the hours or the years pass; He is not like the shadow on the sundial, but is always the same (James 1:17). (2) Uses indicating protection or defense, in the sense of shelter from the heat or the storm. Most of these references picture God as providing the shelter, and they are numerous in the Psalms (e.g. 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 63:7; 91:1). On some occasions Israel was accused by God of seeking shelter elsewhere, and of hiding in the imaginary safety of other shadows—allies like Egypt whose help she enlisted in her wars (cf. Isa 30:2, 3; Jer 48:45). (3) NT uses in which the sense is foreshadow or adumbrate. These fig. uses imply that the realities of heaven cast a shadow on the earth—a shadow which will in most cases later be replaced by actuality. They further imply that there is a certain relationship between the heavenly and the earthly: that what God has ordained on earth is a representation of what is in heaven but, for the present time, only a representation and not the reality itself.
The most significant reference in this category is to the Tabernacle and its contents in the wilderness (Heb 8:5; 10:1). The writer to the Hebrews explains that the real structure in the desert, in which the Levitical offerings took place, was only an illustration in visible form of spiritual reality, or spiritual truth. There exist in heaven, he suggests, spiritual facts of such character that, when they are tr. onto the material plane, they take this particular form. The relationship of man to God can be concretized in this particular way. But, he adds, these material forms were never more than a foreshadowing of a new and more dramatic material expression of the spiritual reality—the coming and the sacrifice of Christ. Thus he challenges the normal human pattern of thought, in which material objects throw insubstantial shadows: in this case, it is the spiritual, insubstantial but entirely real, which casts its shadow in a material form, in advance of its own final establishment.
See also Tabernacle.