Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Naama Zahavi-Ely <nxzaha AT wm.edu>]

The term that comes to mind is mevush, which appears only once, in plural 
with 3ms
pronominal suffix as mevushav (m:wu$fw, Deuteronomy 25 11) -  a hapax 
legomena whose
meaning is absolutely clear.  The root means 'shame', of course.  I would 
never have
connected "stones" in Hebrew with testicles, neither in Biblical Hebrew nor 
in any
other period of the language.  The formal word in modern hebrew is ashach 
()f$fx), and
I would guess it that it comes from Misnaic Hebrew.  Unfortunately I don't 
have the
literature to check its period here.

Best wishes,

Naama Zahavi-Ely

Cynthia Edenburg wrote:

> 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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