Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

As Na'amah pointed out, )$k is the proper term for testicles in Modern
Hebrew. However, in BH it indeed is hapax, and all the instances in early
Rabbinic Hebrew (MH) occur in discussions of this passage.
I remember that some of the ANE texts in ANET use the stone euphemism. For
example, Ginsberg translated the section Ras Shamra 319 in ANET: "He seizes
and holds [her] womb; [She] siezes and holds [his] stones". I can't check
whether this is a literal rendering of the Ugaritic or whether Ginsberg is
being poetic. Does anyone know how the Ugaritic reads? Also, I seem to
remember that the Hittite Kumarbi text use the stone image (or am I
confusing the myth about the god who turns to stone and then is
emasculated?)

Cynthia Edenburg

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