Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Peter,
     Thank you for the helpful look at sexually euphemistic verbs in
Leviticus 18 and 20. I agree with you that 18:8 allows for a broader
situation than the words about "your mother" in verse 7, allowing for a
situation where the father takes a second wife. I agree with the rest of
what you say but am a bit confused about your last paragraph:

We must presume however that it was OK for a man to "uncover the nakedness"
of women not related or more distantly related to oneself -for otherwise
the details here are meaningless. Presumably such
relationships were equivalent to marriages, and cannot be translated
"shameful thing". But it is unclear what happened when the woman was
already married but not to a close relative. There are some
interesting semantics of euphemisms to be looked at here!

I agree with the first two sentences but cannot understand the third. If
one "uncovered the nakedness" of a woman who was already married, but not
to a close relative, then would it not be adultery? Perhaps I have
misunderstood you.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard