Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Cynthia Edenburg <cynthia AT oumail.openu.ac.il>]

Dan Wagner referred to the possibility of a sexual allusion in the mention
of gathering and casting stone. I don't have the literature here to check,
and it could be that Gordis does mentione this, but I think it probably was
in reference to H.L. Ginsberg, who to the best of my knowledge first
commented on this. The key to this interpretation is of course the
parallelism between the two halves of each verse throughout the poem, which
seems to indicate that there should be a sexual allusion parallel to the
embracing in v. 5b. Stones as a euphemism for the testicles is attested in
other languages, and may be a universal metaphor. Unfortunately, there
doesn't seem to be another other occurance of this euphemism in BH, and I
haven't been able to find one in MH. Has anyone observed how testicles are
euphemistically termed in BH or MH?

Cynthia Edenburg

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