Swearing on a Penis
A curious chapter in the history of male genitalia
It’s an iconic scene in dozens of movies and television shows: a macho bad guy is brought to his knees, rendered helpless with pain, and shown to be the loser he is when the hero grabs him by the testicles and squeezes.
My guess is that there’s not a man out there who can watch a scene like this without feeling his thighs spastically clinch. It’s not just that such an assault inflicts writhing physical agony. It’s also a colossal humiliation. The message is clear: you think you’re a tough guy? Well, this is what I think of your manhood, chump!1
But centuries ago, if we can trust ancient sources, grabbing male genitalia had a quite different meaning. It was neither a physical assault nor an insult to masculinity. Instead, it was a gesture that solemnized an oath or promise.
There are two accounts in the Book of Genesis that involve swearing an oath while placing a hand under the promisee’s thigh. One focuses on Abraham and the other on his son, Jacob. Both are old men who have reached the end of their days, and they want to make sure that their final requests carry the weight of inescapable obligations. The odd (to our modern sensibilities) hand-thigh gesture apparently added weight to the vows.
“And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: And I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell: But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.” (Gen 24:2-4, KJV)
In this first passage, Abraham wants to make sure that his only legitimate son Isaac marries a Hebrew rather than a Canaanite woman. So he tasks his old and trusted servant Eliezar2 to see that his wish is fulfilled, and solemnizes the pact by having Eliezar place a hand under his thigh and swear before God to honor his master’s instructions.
The second passage occurs towards the end of Genesis. Isaac’s son Jacob solemnizes in the same way a request to his own son, Joseph, to be buried in the land of his ancestors rather than the foreign soil of Egypt.
“And the time drew nigh that Israel [Jacob] must die: and he called his son Joseph, and said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt: But I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place.” (Gen 47:29-30, KJV)
Now, the word rendered as “thigh” in both passages is yārēk (יָרֵךְ). It can refer to the actual thigh of either a human or animal (Lev 9:21) or, alternatively, simply the side of an object (Ex 25:31, 37:17, 40:22). But it’s typically intended to designate the reproductive organs. So, for example, in “All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins …” (Gen 46:26, KJV), yārēk is the word translated as “loins.” (See also Ex 1:5, Judg 8:30.) Or there’s a particularly horrific curse in the Book of Numbers that hopes the offending “thigh” (yārēk) of an adulterer will rot or waste away (5:21, 22, 27). Surely yārēk doesn’t straightforwardly refer to “thighs” in either of these instances.
What are we to make of this?
The minority opinion in both the rabbinic tradition and modern scholarship is that yārēk in fact literally and only refers to the actual thigh. The assumption is that sitting on a subordinate’s hand is a gesture of dominance over him or her. The twelfth-century Talmudist Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) seems to have taken this position. The gesture, he taught, is simply a sign of subjugation, no more and no less.3
But most consider that yārēk is a colloquialism for the organs of reproduction in general (the aforementioned curse from Numbers applies to a woman), and especially the penis.
So placing a hand under the thigh in the two Genesis passages really means grasping the penis.
There’s at least one bit of evidence that suggests the practice wasn’t unique to the ancient Hebrews, thereby lending credence to the thigh/yārēk-as-penis interpretation. A fragment of a Babylonian letter (ca 1700 BC) from the city of Kisurra in South Mesopotamia puts the point a bit more explicitly than the Book of Genesis does.
“Thus you [have said to me]: ‘Let your envoy grasp my testicles and my penis, and then I will give [it] to you.’ Concerning [??] then what you have said to me, [I am dispatching to you] Burriya the son of Menanum.”4
Why is the male reproductive organ the physical vehicle of oath-taking?5 There are two going explanations.
The first is that the penis is sworn upon because it’s the “seat of the procreative powers.”6 A penis oath both recalls the ancestors of the person to whom the vow is made and includes his progeny in the oath-maker’s commitment. Both of these “add weight to the solemnity and inviolability of the obligation incurred.”7 It also may be that doing so was a symbolic way of “invoking the ancestral spirits of the family to witness and assure the fulfillment of the promise.”8 Violation of the oath risked the displeasure of those ancestral spirits. Additionally, one commentator suspects that the oath has embedded in it the threat of childlessness for the person who takes and breaks it, something like “may my organ not produce children if I betray this vow.”9
This interpretation would be a sufficient accounting for the Babylonian custom of penis oaths. But there may be an additional explanation when it comes to the Genesis passages: the male member is reckoned to be a sanctified “token” signifyng God’s providence/presence/covenantal fidelity. Hence it’s an appropriate object upon which to make a solemn oath, akin to swearing on a Bible or a holy relic.
The sanctification of the male member goes back to a covenant10 God makes with Abraham.
“God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.” (Gen 17:9-11, KJV)
This aura surrounding the penis as a covenantal token may account for the injunction in Deuteronomy11 that it’s a great offense for a wife to grab another man’s privates, even if she does so to come to the aid of her husband in a physical fracas. Many commentators just assume that the rule is motivated by prudishness or misogyny, and there’s probably some truth to the charge. But it’s likely that the prohibition is also a reflection of the assumption that the circumcision sanctifies the penis and that any assault of it, even an unintentional one, is forbidden.
In the Talmud Bavli, Shevuot 38b, for example, Reb Ashi likens the grasping of a circumcised penis, an organ “considered sacred to some degree,” to clutching “a sacred item [like the Torah] in hand while taking an oath” in a court of law. Reb Berekiah contends in the Midrash Rabbah, Genesis 59.8, that because circumcision was a painful operation, it was “precious” to Abraham, making the penis a token of sacrifice worthy to be sworn upon. A majority of contemporary biblical scholars and translators agree with this circumcision interpretation.12 It should be noted, though, that it’s not inconsistent with the procreative powers interpretation. Both may be at work, at least in the ancient Hebraic context, when it comes to penis oaths.
I’ve no doubt that many people today will find the idea of a sanctified penis both risible and offensive. Taken out of its biblical context, it certainly can come across that way. Moreover, I’m equally certain that an entire book could be written about the patriarchal assumptions embedded in the practice of swearing oaths on men’s genitalia.
But three points are worth keeping in mind.
The first is that the rabbinical and scholarly interpretations of Genesis 24:2 and 47:9 go a long way towards explaining a couple of otherwise baffling biblical passages. There’s great value in that, at least for those of us interested in decoding such things.
The second point is this. There’s an immense distance, cultural even more than chronological, between the ancient understanding of the penis’ significance as a token of human-divine covenant, and today’s coarse hyper-masculine fetishization of it—even though, as the ball-grabbing trope reminds us, it’s by far the most vulnerable bit of the male anatomy.
But what’s especially intriguing—and this is the third point—is the possibility that the contemporary fetishization is a faint echo, an overlooked historical residue, of the ancient Hebraic belief that the penis is special because it’s a sign of God’s fidelity. As Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”13
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It’s astounding how frequently male reproductive organs make their way into aggressive slang or cussing: a coward “has no balls,” an assertive woman is a “ball-buster,” an obnoxious person is a “dick” or “dickhead” or “prick,” an aggressive retort is “blow me!” or “suck my dick!” In her fascinating Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Melissa Mohr offers a full rundown, from ancient times to the present day, of penis-centered insults.
The oath-taking servant isn’t explicitly named in Genesis 24:2-4, but he’s likely the Eliezer of Damascus mentioned in Genesis 15:2.
The notion of a penis oath casts a new light on the story of Jacob wrestling with the mysterious man/angel on his return to the land of his birth. We’re told that in the match, his “thigh” (yārēk) was broken, and that he ever afterwards walked with a limp. (Gen 32:25, 31-32) But we’re also told that the mysterious stranger blessed Jacob, promising—vowing—that he will, with God’s help, become the sire of an entire nation. Could this be a penis oath sworn by the stranger?
“And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” (Gen 32:25-28, KJV)
In his magisterial translation of the Hebrew scriptures, Robert Alter points out that the first instance of the oath in Genesis is especially linked to reproductive capacity because of the search of a wife for Isaac who will continue Abraham’s line. The Hebrew Bible. Volume 1: The Five Books of Moses (W.W. Norton, 2019), p. 78.
Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), pp. 170, 171.
Meir Malul, “More on paḥad yiṣḥāq (Genesis XXXI 42, 53) and the Oath by the Thigh.” Vetus Testamentum 35/2 (April 1985): 198.
The Five Books of Moses, trans. Everett Fox (New York: Schocken Books, 1997), p. 100.
In the Abrahamic cycle, God makes three promises to Abraham which eventually get transformed into solemn covenants. The first is the covenant that promises to make Abraham’s progeny into a great nation (Gen 15). The second promises Abraham a great name; this is the covenant sealed with circumcision (Gen 17). The third covenent offers a universal blessing (Gen 22).
“When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.” (Deut 25:11-12, KJV)
See, for example, R. David Freedman, “‘Put Your Hand Under My Thigh’—The Patriarchal Oath.” Biblical Archaeology Review (June 1976); Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006, p. 368; and E.A. Speiser, Genesis: A New Translation (New York: Doubleday, 1962), p. 178.
William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (New York: Vintage, 1994), p. 73.