Can I Just Hope To Die, Stick A Needle In My Eye?

Swear words. No, not those swear words. Not the kind that would cause your mother to threaten to wash your mouth out with soap. Oaths. Something that doesn’t mean much today, was once larger than life in the bible.

Swearing was a big deal for Abraham.

Abraham wanted his son to have a wife. Not just any wife. Actually, he didn’t have a long list of qualities his future daughter-in-law had to possess for her to be worthy of his son. No. Just one. She couldn’t be a Canaanite.

Abraham puts his number one guy in charge of finding a wife for his son, Isaac. Abraham tells his servant in charge to swear.

Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but will go to the land of my birth and get a wife for my son Isaac.

The under my thigh part seems a bit odd. It is even more bizarre when you find out that thigh seems to be a euphemism for the male organ. Commentaries suggest that perhaps by touching it, the person swearing the oath calls sterility or loss of children upon himself, should he violate it.

Well, the story continues with the servant setting out to find Rebekah.

It is not clear if the servant left swearing from his swearing.

~ by bart on February 20, 2008.