degel

In the wilderness Israel did not camp as a crowd. The book of Numbers sorts the twelve tribes into four large groups, and each group assembled around and marched behind its own standard: a raised emblem, like a military banner, that told everyone where their people belonged. Three tribes rallied to each one, and the standard of Judah's camp always moved out first.

The word points in two directions at once. It can mean the emblem itself, the thing lifted up for all to see, but in these same passages it slides toward meaning the whole division of tribes gathered under that emblem. That is why English Bibles move between "standard," "banner," and "division," and why the ancient Greek translators reached for τάγμα, a word for an ordered military company, rather than a word for a piece of cloth.

It sits close to two other Hebrew words. A נֵס is a signal-pole or ensign raised on a height to rally people or warn them, while a standard marks a fixed body of people already drawn up. In Numbers 2:2 the two ideas run side by side: each Israelite is to camp by his own standard, "with the signs" (אוֹת) of his father's house.

Only once does the word step outside the army camp. In Song of Songs the beloved says "his banner over me was love," turning the military picture tender: the emblem that once marked which company you belonged to now marks whose love has claimed you.