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In Genesis 24:2–9 Abraham has his servant Eliezer put his hand under the Patriarch’s thigh to swear “by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth” that the servant will not arrange a marriage for Abraham’s son Isaac with a Canaanite woman. Similarly, in Genesis 47:29–31 the dying Patriarch Jacob has his son Joseph swear to him that he will bury Jacob not in Egypt, but alongside Jacob’s own parents in the Cave of Machpelah; and the oath-taking ritual again calls for putting a hand under the Patriarch’s thigh.
Talmudic tradition1 takes these verses to indicate that the oath was sworn while the circumcised membrum of the Patriarch was held in hand, and derives from this interpretation the rule that all Jewish oaths must be sworn while some ritual object is held in hand. Ordinary people must hold a Torah scroll; scholars may hold any ritual object.
The reason the Talmud requires an oath to be sworn while a ritual object is held is indicated by such sources as Genesis 21:23, where Abraham is required by Abimelech to swear “by God (or ‘gods’?) here”; and Exodus 17:16, where Moses seems to be swearing an oath by the divine throne. The ritual object is supposed to indicate the presence of God at the time of the swearing. Thus the gravity of the oath is impressed upon the one who swears it.
Similarly, in the Biblical passages cited at the opening of this article, the circumcised membrum, as the sign of the covenant between God and his people (Genesis 17:9–14), invokes the divine presence to the oath-taking ritual.
That this is in fact the purpose of the holding of the sign of the Covenant in hand is suggested by certain Old Babylonian legal documents from about 1700 B.C.E.2 In these Babylonian documents, divine symbols are used to invoke the divine presence in oath-taking ceremonies. In cases where it was beyond the capacity of human beings to render a demonstrably correct decision—for example, in property disputes when no deeds existed, or in criminal cases when no witnesses were present, or in determining the value of goods on a ship now sunk—Babylonian law required trying the case “in the presence of a god” and settling matters by means of an oath.3 When the temple of the god was too far away, or if other circumstances prevented going to the temple to try the case in the presence of the god, then a part of the god’s image was sent from the temple to the site of the dispute; and this part of the god’s image was used to represent the divine presence. The part of the image that was sent to the site of the dispute was a characteristic symbol of the god: the saw of the Sun God, the spear of Ishtar, the mace of Ninurta, the dog of Gula.4 The litigants held the divine symbol in hand while they swore their oaths,5 or they swore their oaths “in the presence of the god,” that is, before the divine symbol.6
When the temple sent the part of the god’s image to the site of the dispute, it charged rent for its use; and we have several such rental agreements. These contracts have been studied by Dr. Rivkah Harris of Northwestern University in an article entitled, “The Journey of the Divine Weapon.”7
The similarity between the Babylonian and the Biblical customs has perhaps been obscured by the Bible’s strict prohibition against images of God. Since no images of God could be used in the swearing rituals, the Bible has to have Abraham represent the divine presence by some other means: namely, by using the circumcision, the sign of the Covenant with God.
According to the Rabbis, after the revelation 004at Sinai, the Torah was considered the sign of the Covenant and was to be used to represent the divine presence. The Rabbis felt that they themselves were so well attuned to the covenant-fulfilling aspect of each commandment that among themselves they allowed the use of any ritual object to represent the presence of God at oath-taking ceremonies, although non-scholars continued to use only the Torah itself for this purpose.
Many modern scholars—for example, Driver, Speiser and Sarna—also interpret the placing of the hand under the thigh in the Biblical oath-taking ceremonies as a euphemism for grasping the circumcised membrum; but the symbolism of the act is unclear to them. These three scholars suggest that the act of grasping the genitalia involves the descendants of the swearing party, either by obligating his descendants to fulfill the oath,8 or by imposing “the threat of sterility for the offender or the extinction of his offspring.”9 That is, if the oath is not fulfilled, the offender will be sterile and his line cut off. The aptness of the oath-taking ritual to the proposed punishment of sterility is obvious.
These scholars evidently base their interpretation of the Patriarch’s oath-taking ritual on the familiar curse formulae of royal inscriptions which provide that the gods should take away the living children of anyone who defaces or changes the monument, and that the gods should prevent the offender’s having future offspring.10
This interpretation is vulnerable at best.
In the curse-formula literature that we possess, the formulae are used only by kings; among private parties they are unknown11 until Neo-Babylonian times (6th century B.C.E.). Moreover, a curse formula is particularly unlikely to be used in the case of an agreement between master and servant (Abraham and Eliezer in Genesis 24); and it is unthinkable in the case of a father and son (Jacob and Joseph in Genesis 47). Was it not Jacob himself who (in Genesis 42:35–38) refused to accept Reuben’s offer of Reuben’s two sons as a pledge for Benjamin’s safety when Joseph demands Benjamin’s presence in Egypt? The offer that Jacob does accept is from Judah (43:8–13), who tells his father, “If I do not bring him (Benjamin) back to you (from Egypt) and set him before you, I shall stand guilty before you forever.” No mention here—where we would surely expect it—of sterility or extirpation. Would this same Jacob then impose such dire sanctions as those suggested by the curse formulae on his beloved son Joseph?
The parallel to the Old Babylonian custom of using parts of divine images in oath-taking rituals is a much less vulnerable explanation of the act of grasping the circumcised membrum in Biblical oath-taking ceremonies; and this interpretation is supported by the completely independent methodology of traditional Jewish interpretation. Moreover, the very same custom is still evident in modern secular courtrooms, where Bibles are used for the same reason that divine images were used in Babylonian law and the circumcised membrum was used by Abraham and Jacob—to invoke the divine presence as witness to the gravity of the oath.
In Genesis 24:2–9 Abraham has his servant Eliezer put his hand under the Patriarch’s thigh to swear “by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth” that the servant will not arrange a marriage for Abraham’s son Isaac with a Canaanite woman. Similarly, in Genesis 47:29–31 the dying Patriarch Jacob has his son Joseph swear to him that he will bury Jacob not in Egypt, but alongside Jacob’s own parents in the Cave of Machpelah; and the oath-taking ritual again calls for putting a hand under the Patriarch’s thigh. Talmudic tradition1 takes these verses to indicate that the oath […]
