Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 8/7/2004 8:35:29 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
josephlauer AT hotmail.com writes:


> http://home.comcast.net/~hebsed/wegner.htm

I never heard of just two bricks supporting the woman giving birth--but why 
not?  And why two stones can have done the job just as well is obvious.  
Mystery solved.  Thank you, Joseph.  The business with the knife survived for 
many 
years.  In AE it was used to threaten evil spirits that might hover about the 
birthing process, but in much later times in other cultures a knife was 
placed 
under the mattress when a woman was in labor--supposedly to "cut the 
pain"--but perhaps by then no one knew any longer what the knife was really 
for but its 
presence at birth was obviously a thing of great antiquity.

Marianne Luban

Marianne Luban