What Are Swaddling Clothes

These strips kept the newborn child warm and also ensured that the child s limbs would grow.

What are swaddling clothes.

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. This detail can easily be passe. Swaddling clothes were bands of cloth probably cotton not really clothes as in a garment. If a manger were a feeding trough for stable animals it wouldn t be any different.

The phrase swaddling clothes is a translation of the root greek word sparganoo. And they went quickly and indeed found the babe lying in a manger luke 2 16 but here the swaddling clothes are not mentioned. They would have to go around and ask everyone if they knew where the baby was born. 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.

In the gospel of luke many small details are given about the birth of jesus. Meaning of the greek word swaddling clothes. Swaddling clothes according to every commentator i have read were bands of cloth probably cotton not really clothes as in a garment. If swaddling clothes were a common practice after the birth of a child how would this be a sign.

The word appears in only two verses in the new testament and both times they appear in luke 2. The first appearance of sparganoo occurs in verse 7 and the second is in verse 12. Would they have to knock on every door in bethlehem to ask if a child was born. The swaddling clothes could prefigure jesus burial the magis gift of myrrh in matthew 2 11 is a clearer bit of foreshadowing but the link can t be proved linguistically.

For example we read how mary wrapped him in swaddling clothes luke 2 7. Swaddling clothes described in the bible consisted of a cloth tied together by bandage like strips.