“We have a little sister,
And she hath no breasts:
What shall we do for our sister
In the day when she shall be spoken for?
If she be a wall,
We will build upon her a turret of silver:
And if she be a door,
We will inclose her with boards of cedar.”
Job, cursing the day of his birth, says (Job 3 : 1–10):
“Let the day perish wherein I was born,
And the night which said, There is a man child conceived....
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:
Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb,
Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.”
Referring to this passage, the Babylonian Talmud (Treatise Bechoroth, 45
a) quotes Rabbi Eliezer as saying, “Just as a house has doors, so also a
woman has doors.” Others say: “Just as a house has keys [_miphteakh_,
literally ‘opener’], so the woman has a key; for it is said (Gen. 30 :
22) ‘God hearkened to her, and opened [a play upon _patakh_, ‘to open,’
and _miphteakh_, ‘key’] her womb.’” The famous Rabbi Akibah says: “Just
as a house has hinges, so there are hinges to a wife; for it is written
(1 Sam. 4 : 19), ‘She kneeled and gave birth, for her hinges had turned’
[translating _ṣîrîm_ (or _tseereem_) as ‘hinges’ instead of ‘pains’; the
word has the former meaning in Proverbs 26 : 14, ‘As the door turneth
upon its hinges, so doth the sluggard upon his bed.’]”
The Talmudic treatise Middâ (Mishna § 2, 5) explains the different parts
of the womb under the metaphors _khĕdĕr_, “interior chamber;”
_pʾrosdôr_, “vestibule;” _ʿalîyyâ_, “upper story.”[669] Professor Dr.
Morris Jastrow, Jr., in citing these metaphors, suggests that they
coincide with the Arabic and Egyptian custom of using a key in the
marriage rite, as described at page 244.
Critics have long puzzled over the seemingly contradictory uses of the
Hebrew word _pôth_ in two places in the Old Testament; and the
connection of “woman” and “door” with the parts thereof, above
suggested, may aid in resolving the difficulty. At 1 Kings 7 : 50, in a
list of the holy vessels of the house of the Lord, there are mentioned
“the hinges (Heb., _pôthôth_), both for the doors of the inner house,
the most holy place, and for the doors of the house, to wit, of the
temple, of gold.” At Isaiah 3 : 17 the same word _poth_ is translated
“their secret parts,” in a reference to the humiliation of “the
daughters of Zion.” It has been suggested by some that there was a
corruption of the text in Isaiah. (See Delitzsch and Dillmann, in their
commentaries at this place.) Yet in view of the rabbinical uses of
language, the text would seem to be trustworthy. _Pôth_ is an “opening,”
of a _woman_ or of a _door_. Additional light is thrown on the use of
the term _pôth_ as “opening” and as “hinge,” or “socket,” when we bear
in mind that the hinge of an Oriental door was a hole, or cavity, or
door socket, on which the door turned, in order to give an opening or
entrance. Often these door sockets were made of metal,–bronze, silver,
or gold.[670] Sometimes the entire thresholds, in which were these
sockets or “basons,” were of metal. If, however, the threshold was of
stone or wood, the socket, or a plate with a depression in it, was of
metal. The _pôth_, therefore, when referring to a door, was the metal
plate or socket in the threshold on which the door turned as on a hinge.
It is, indeed, possible that the opening or cavity in the ancient stone
or metal threshold was sometimes the bason, or vessel, into which the
covenanting blood was poured.[671] In that case, the correspondence of
the opening of the woman, and the socket of the threshold, would be more
obvious. Important inscriptions are usually found at or around these
so-called “door sockets,” in Babylonian relics; and there is still doubt
in many minds whether these cavities were always hinge sockets.
The word “hinges,” or “hangers,” is at the best an inaccurate and
misleading term, as applied to the pivots or knuckles on which an
ancient door swung in its socket. Ancient doors were not hung on hinges,
but they swung on pivots. Instead of a hinge, there was a knuckle or
pintle, with a corresponding socket, or cavity, or opening, in the
threshold or door-sill. Both Gesenius[672] and Stade[673] give “socket”
as one of the meanings of _pôth_. The plural, _pôthoth_, of course,
refers to the sockets of two leaves of a double door on one threshold.
When Samson was shut in at Gaza by the Philistines, the double leaves of
the city gate were held together by a bar, without the lifting of which
the doors could not be opened. “And Samson lay till midnight, and arose
at midnight, and laid hold of the doors of the gate of the city, and the
two posts [the upright stiles, at the bottom of which were the knuckles
that turned in the threshold sockets], and plucked them up, bar
[cross-bar or latch] and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and
carried them up to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron.”[674]
I have in my possession a bronze door-socket and knuckle of an ancient
gate or door, unearthed from a mound in the vicinity of Ghuzzeh, the
site of ἡ τύχηancient Gaza, that meets this description.
[Illustration]
In primitive symbolism, as shown in Babylonia, Egypt, and India, the
circle or ring, like this socket, represents woman.
It would be interesting, in this connection, to follow out the meanings
and uses of the Greek words πυθμήν (_puthmēn_), root φυ (_phu_); and
φλιή (_phliē_), doorpost, root φλι (_phli_); compare φλέω (_phleō_),
φίλος (_philos_). It is evident that the twofold idea of the threshold
of life, and the threshold, or sockets, of the door, is in the uses of
these terms and their derivatives in earlier and later Greek. But only
this suggestion can be made here.
The correspondence of “woman” and “door,” or of “wife” and “threshold,”
in the Arabic, has already been pointed out.[675] A similar suggestion
is in Sanskrit terms.[676]
In Germany, even at the present time, a common term for “woman” is
“woman chamber” (_frauenzimmer_), as in Arabic _hareema_ is a woman,
while _hareem_ is the women’s apartment. A remark attributed to a
prominent American clergyman, as showing the naturalness of the figure
of woman as a door, is: “He who marries a wife opens a door, through
which unborn generations shall troop.”
A Chinese character is the representation of “threshold,” of “door,” and
also of “woman.”[677] It is suggested by the lexicographer that the
origin of this character was a small door in a large gate, as the inner
door to the hareem or women’s apartments; but it seems probable, from
the correspondence of this twofold idea with the primitive thought of
woman as the door of humanity, that the Chinese character must have had
an origin prior to that degree of civilization which recognized such a
classification in household apartments. The combination of “door” and
“border” is another Chinese character[678] that stands for “threshold”
or “door-sill.”[679] Confucius said that this
threshold “should not be trodden on when walking through” the door.
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Footnote 668:
See, for example, 197 f., _supra_.
Footnote 669:
See also citations from Buxtorf at p. 200, _supra_.
Footnote 670:
See pp. 127, 132 f., 207 f., _supra_.
Footnote 671:
See p. 207 f., _supra_.
Footnote 672:
_Handwörterbuch_, Mülhan and Volck, 11th ed., s. v.
Footnote 673:
_Woerterbuch u. Alt. Test._, s. v.
Footnote 674:
Judges 16 : 3.
Footnote 675:
See p. 200, _supra_.
Footnote 676:
See p. 197 f., _supra_.
Footnote 677:
_’kw’ un_
Footnote 678:
_yü_
Footnote 679:
See S. Wells Williams’s _Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language_,
pp. 496, 1141.
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