"You shall have them make the cover of the Tabernacle out of ten tapestries [consisting] of linen, turquoise wool, purple wool, and scarlet wool." (Ex. 26:1)

These four types of thread allude to the four bases of our emotional relationship with G‑d.

Scarlet wool is red, and alludes to fire. The fire within our soul is the ardent love of G‑d that results from contemplating his transcendent infinity. When we realize the extent to which G‑d transcends creation and that He is the only true reality, we are overcome with a fiery, passionate desire to escape the limitations of the world in order to know him and merge with him.

Turquoise wool is the color of the sky, and alludes to our experience of G‑d's majesty. In this experience, we also contemplate G‑d's transcendent infinity, but focus on our own insignificance in comparison. Doing so fills us with feelings of awe.

Purple wool is a blend of blue and red, of love and awe. It therefore alludes to pity, an emotion compounded of feelings of love and anger: love for the ideal, anger over how the ideal goes unfulfilled. Specifically, we pity our Divine soul when we consider its plight: having to live so spiritually distant from its sublime, natural home.

Linen is white, and therefore alludes to the soul's basic, essential love of G‑d, which transcends reason, just as white is the background against which all other colors may be seen. The soul's basic, essential love for G‑d is what makes us capable of self-sacrifice for G‑d's honor, inasmuch as it expresses our unassailable bond with G‑d.

[Based on Sefer HaMa'amarim 5708, pp. 138 ff.]