Ancient Hebrew is full of chiasms, parallelisms, idioms, metaphors, and other word plays, such as contranyms (the same word with opposite meanings) and homonyms (different words that sound alike). Writers crafted layers of meaning to both obscure and illuminate.

The Hebrew words for light (אוֹר, aleph, vav, resh) and skin (עוֹר, ahyin, vav, resh) are homonyms. Both are pronounced, ohr.

Rabbinic scholars and Christian prelates postulate these words were chosen to emphasize a relationship between skin and light, particularly relative to entering this world.

Adam is Hebrew for humankind. Eve is Hebrew for breathing, living, or giving life. When breath entered humankind—when Eve chose to unite with Adam—their Creator clothed them, not just in coats of skin (Genesis 3:21), but in garments of light.

Every soul enters this realm clothed in light. Moses descending from Sinai—from God’s presence—so filled with light that he had to veil himself (Exodus 34). As beings of light, we also descended from the Divine and were veiled.

When Moses brought the sons of Aaron to the door of the Tabernacle and washed and anointed them and clothed them in sacred vestments (Exodus 40), he reenacted their birth when they were clothed in light and entered their sacred tabernacles of mortal flesh.

That’s who you are. That’s what you are. You may attempt to hide it, but you can’t take it off.

Your humanity is clothed in your divinity, and vice versa. You can’t not be human, and you can’t not be divine.

You are light.