attire: the outfit someone is dressed in, usually fine or formal enough to be worth remarking on
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This noun is built on the everyday verb for putting clothes on (לָבַשׁ), and it names the result: what a person has on. The broader word for clothing from that same root (לְבוּשׁ) can cover a beggar's rags as easily as a king's robe, but this one almost always points at dress somebody notices.
That is why it keeps turning up in scenes of display:
the matching outfits of Solomon's waiters and cupbearers, which left the queen of Sheba with no breath in her
the special garb handed out from a storeroom to everyone who came to worship Baal
the fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth God dresses his bride in
the foreign fashions the king's officials had taken up, which a prophet treats as disloyalty
Twice the word simply names good clothes as goods. Job pictures a rich man heaping up garments the way a laborer heaps clay, because in that world a wardrobe was stored wealth, and in Isaiah the figure coming back from the winepress says his whole outfit is stained. The common thread is not ceremony but visibility: this is the clothing people look at.
Nuances
1adress that marks rank, role, or occasion: court uniform, ceremonial garb, a bride's fine clothes, imported fashion
1Ki 10:52Ki 10:222Ch 9:4 (2×)Ezk 16:13Zep 1:8
1bgood clothes simply as things a person owns and wears, without any ceremony in view
Job 27:16Isa 63:3
Related words
The English words used to translate malbush
“apparel”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“attire”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
It names a whole outfit as an onlooker sees it, not one item of clothing. The matching dress of Solomon's staff is listed among the sights that left the queen of Sheba breathless, right beside his table and his stairway.1Ki 10:52Ch 9:4
The clothing it names is almost always fine enough to be worth remarking on: the linen, silk, and embroidered cloth a bride is dressed in, or the wardrobe a rich man piles up the way a laborer piles clay.Ezk 16:13Job 27:16
It covers dress issued or taken up for a purpose: garb brought out of a keeper's store so that every worshiper of Baal was outfitted alike, and the foreign clothing the king's officials had adopted, which a prophet reads as disloyalty.2Ki 10:22Zep 1:8
Both
Both name what a person has on, and they sit close enough that a poet can pair them in one line. The figure coming back from the winepress says the blood spattered his clothing and stained his whole outfit at the same moment.Isa 63:3
English versions reach for the same handful of words for both, "garment" and "apparel" and "clothes", so the difference between the plain object and the noticed outfit disappears in translation. Isaiah 63:3 is the single verse where the two stand side by side and a reader can see it.Isa 63:3
This is the everyday word the purity laws use for any garment at all, the cloth that catches a stain or a discharge and then has to be washed. Nothing about the clothing needs to be fine or worth noticing for this word to fit.Lev 11:25Lev 15:5Num 19:7Num 31:20
It is the garment people tear when grief or dread hits them, which makes it the standard word in scenes of mourning and repentance.2Sa 1:112Ki 19:1Ezr 9:3Jol 2:13
It can name a plain piece of cloth used as a covering rather than anything a person wears, such as the cloths spread over the sacred furniture whenever Israel broke camp.Num 4:6Num 4:11Ezk 27:20
It is the garment a poor person hands over as security for a loan. The law and the prophets keep coming back to it precisely because it is the one thing he cannot spare.Deu 24:17Job 22:6Pro 20:16Amo 2:8
Because it names such an ordinary object, it becomes the stock picture of what wears out. A world that will age, and the people who oppose God, are compared to cloth the moth eats through.Job 13:28Psa 102:26Isa 50:9Isa 51:6
The same spelling also carries a second and unrelated meaning, faithless dealing that breaks trust, which has nothing to do with clothing at all.Isa 24:16Jer 12:1
מַחֲלָצָהa change of fine clothes, the festal robes someone is dressed in for a special day; this word covers standing dress as well as one-off finery
This is the ordinary word for what a person has on, and it stretches to plain clothing as readily as to fine dress. Job 27:16 pictures a rich man heaping up clothing in bulk like piles of clay, counting it as stored wealth rather than as anything splendid.Job 27:16
Because it covers clothing in general, it can be soiled and ruined: in Isaiah 63:3 the speaker's clothing is stained by the juice trodden out in the winepress.Isa 63:3
It is the word for issued clothing, the matching outfit a whole group is put into. Jehu has the keeper of the wardrobe bring clothing out for every worshiper of Baal, and the queen of Sheba is struck by the dress of Solomon's attendants.2Ki 10:221Ki 10:52Ch 9:4
It can carry a charge of disloyalty rather than a note of luxury. Zephaniah 1:8 has God punishing the officials who dress in foreign clothing, where the clothing marks who they have thrown in with.Zep 1:8
Both
Both words name clothing that displays a person's standing to anyone watching, not merely cloth that covers the body. The robes in Isaiah 3:22 mark wealth, and the clothing of fine linen and silk in Ezekiel 16:13 marks a bride raised to royal rank.Isa 3:22Ezk 16:13
Both can be clothing kept in store and brought out for an occasion. Clean robes are fetched for the priest in Zechariah 3:4, and in 2 Kings 10:22 the man in charge of the wardrobe brings clothing out for the assembled crowd.Zec 3:42Ki 10:22
Both times this word appears it names a set of fine clothes a person is dressed in for a special moment, never the plain clothing of daily life. English versions reach for "festal robes" or "rich robes" to catch that.Isa 3:22Zec 3:4
In Zechariah 3:4 the change of clothes is the whole point: the filthy clothing comes off the priest and this splendid outfit goes on as the sign that his guilt has been carried away and his standing restored.Zec 3:4
In Isaiah 3:22 it is one named luxury item inside a long inventory of the finery of well off women, listed beside cloaks, handbags and mirrors, so it works like the name of a particular garment rather than a general term for clothing.Isa 3:22
שִׂמְלָהthe outer wrap thrown over the shoulders, which doubled as a blanket at night; this word names a whole outfit rather than one piece
Names the outfits of a royal household as part of the splendor that overwhelms a visitor, so it belongs to descriptions of a court rather than to what one person happens to have on.1Ki 10:52Ch 9:4
Points to luxury dress valued for its richness: fine linen and embroidered work, or costly clothing piled up alongside silver as hoarded wealth.Ezk 16:13Job 27:16
Covers the special outfits kept in a store and handed out for a particular occasion, brought out by the official in charge of the royal clothing supply.2Ki 10:22
Can carry the sense of dress as a badge of loyalty, so that wearing foreign styles is itself the offense being condemned.Zep 1:8
Both
Both name outer clothing that can be costly, and both are used for fine dress given to someone as a mark of favor.Ezk 16:13Gen 45:22Exo 3:22
Both appear in war poetry for clothing soaked in blood, whether the blood is on the conqueror or on the soldier.Isa 63:3Isa 9:5
Names one piece of cloth solid enough to be picked up and put to other uses: carried across two men's shoulders to cover a body, tied around kneading bowls, spread on the ground to catch plunder, or wrapped around a sword.Gen 9:23Exo 12:34Jdg 8:251Sa 21:9
Stands for the basic covering a person cannot do without: the wrap a poor man sleeps in, the clothing God supplies to the foreigner, the one possession that still counts as having something when everything else is gone.Exo 22:27Deu 10:18Isa 3:6Isa 3:7
Is what people wash or exchange to mark a change of condition, whether preparing to meet God, coming out of prison, leaving off mourning, or setting aside the clothing of captivity.Exo 19:10Gen 41:142Sa 12:20Deu 21:13
Is the clothing people tear when grief or disaster strikes, the standard gesture of mourning.Gen 37:34Gen 44:13Jos 7:6
Shows up as an object the law deals with directly: a lost one that must be given back to its owner, a rule about men and women not wearing each other's clothing, and a cloth spread out before the town elders as evidence.Deu 22:3Deu 22:5Deu 22:17
malbush in the other biblical languages
ἱματισμόςGreek“clothing”the Greek word for someone's clothing taken as a whole, and often the costly kind, as with the people in soft clothing in the king's houses
Only the Hebrew word is handed out. It names outfits brought from a storeroom and given to a whole group at once, or the matched dress of a king's working staff, so that everyone wearing it is read at a glance as belonging to one company.2Ki 10:221Ki 10:52Ch 9:4
Only the Hebrew word is used as evidence of where a person's loyalty has gone. Dressing in foreign style is treated as a public act that God says he will call to account.Zep 1:8
Only the Hebrew word is pictured ruined by the wearer's own work, splattered and stained by what he has been doing rather than kept fine.Isa 63:3
Both
Both count clothing as stored wealth, set beside silver and gold in the same breath. One picture piles up garments like heaps of clay next to heaps of silver; the other lists "apparel" alongside silver and gold as things a leader might have been accused of wanting.Job 27:16Act 20:33
Both name expensive finery that marks status and catches the eye: fine linen, silk and embroidery on one side, "splendid clothing" worn in royal houses and "costly attire" on the other. This is the overlap that makes the Greek word the New Testament's counterpart for the sort of dress the Hebrew word names.Ezk 16:13Luk 7:251Ti 2:9
Only the Greek word turns up as plunder. At the cross the soldiers treat the clothing stripped off a condemned man as property to be split up, and they throw lots to settle who gets it.Mat 27:35Jhn 19:24
Only the Greek word describes clothing changed from the outside in. On the mountain the outfit itself flashes white as the glory breaks through, so what a person wears becomes the visible measure of the moment.Luk 9:29
στολήGreek“robe”the long Greek robe that signals rank or honor, closer to one specific garment than to a whole outfit
Works as a collective word for whole sets of clothing rather than one garment, the kind kept in store and issued to a crowd: Jehu has the man in charge of the wardrobe bring out clothing for every worshiper of Baal, and Solomon outfits a whole staff of attendants.2Ki 10:221Ki 10:52Ch 9:4
Counts as stored-up property, piled up alongside silver the way a rich man heaps up anything else he owns.Job 27:16
Points to the actual cloth a person is dressed in, so the text can name the material: fine linen and silk in the picture of a bride richly dressed.Ezk 16:13
Can be the clothing on someone's back that gets ruined by what they do in it, splashed and stained through and through by the one treading the winepress.Isa 63:3
What a person puts on can betray where their loyalty lies, which is why God promises to deal with officials who dress themselves in clothing borrowed from other nations.Zep 1:8
Both
Both name clothing that makes a person's standing visible at a glance, and English Bibles reach for the same plain words for each, "robe" for the Greek and "clothing" for the Hebrew: the finery of Solomon's attendants takes the breath out of a visiting queen, and the long robes of the teachers announce who is important.1Ki 10:5Mrk 12:38
In both, fine clothing is something given to someone as an act of honor rather than bought: God dresses the abandoned girl in fine linen and silk, and the father orders the best robe brought out for the son who came home.Ezk 16:13Luk 15:22
Names one single long flowing outer robe, so it can be counted and handed to one person: the father calls for the best one to put on his returning son, and each of the martyrs waiting under the altar is given one of his own.Luk 15:22Rev 6:11
Stands for a person's cleared standing before God, a robe that can be washed and made white, with the washing itself the thing that makes the wearer blessed.Rev 7:14Rev 22:14
Marks the wearer as belonging to heaven's own company: the young man sitting in the empty tomb and the countless crowd standing before the throne are identified by nothing more than their white robes.Mrk 16:5Rev 7:9
Carries a sting the Hebrew word never has, since Jesus twice warns about religious teachers who enjoy parading about in these long robes and soaking up the greetings that come with them.Mrk 12:38Luk 20:46
What scholars say about malbush
BDB glosses malbûš as "raiment, attire" and HALOT as "clothes, garment," adding the narrower application "state robes" for the court descriptions in 1 Kings 10:5 and 2 Chronicles 9:4; DCH lists it flatly as "garment, clothing." No lexicon posits homonymy or a division of consequence within the eight occurrences. Morphologically the noun is a mem-preformative derivative of the root lbš, alongside the verb lāḇaš and the far more frequent noun lᵉḇûš, and every attestation denotes clothing worn on the body. Gamberoni's survey of the lbš word group in TDOT treats malbûš as one of the root's nominal derivatives and observes its concentration in scenes of display, whether royal, cultic, or bridal. Two textual details are worth recording. The parallel court descriptions differ in the number of attestations: 1 Kings 10:5 has the noun once, while 2 Chronicles 9:4 repeats it after the cupbearers, giving the Chronicler's version two. And in 2 Kings 10:22 malbûš stands in the same verse as lᵉḇûš, which commentators generally read as stylistic variation, the second term picking up the first, rather than as a distinction between two kinds of garment.
Sources
BDB, s.v. מַלְבּוּשׁlexicon
HALOT, s.v. מַלְבּוּשׁlexicon
DCH, s.v. מַלְבּוּשׁlexicon
J. Gamberoni, "לָבַשׁ lāḇaš," TDOT 7:457-468theological-dictionary