I remember our Old Testament professor at (now-named) Morling College opening up this subject very interestingly. I’d sometimes wondered about Saul retreating into a cave to ‘cover his feet’ :-)! (Rev. Dr. John Thompson died recently, and he is missed).

If you want a nice Bible without obscenity or sex you’re gonna be battling. The skeptics have had a field day lampooning wowserish Christians’ approach to some of these subjects. See e,g, http://www.skeptictank.org/badnews2.htm

Then there’s the notorious book The Harlot By The Side of the Road – Forbidden Tales of the Bible… …written by Jonathan Kirsch a lawyer and newspaper columnist at The Los Angeles Times.

(See e.g. http://www.internetcampus.com/fog20.htm )

The Hebrew people, it seems to me, had a healthy/robust attitude to this side of created reality…

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

[Other net-friends] wrote: We were attending another church recently with our children and were amazed to hear that the meaning of feet in Isaiah 6:2, “with two [wings] they covered their feet” referred not to feet literally but to their private parts. The preacher applied the same meaning to “feet” in Ruth 3:4, 7, 8 and 14. It spoiled the whole beauty of the relationship between Ruth and Boaz for us! Can anyone shed some clear light on this for us, please?

to which Nathan responded:

If Ruth’s sexuality somehow robs her of her beauty for you, then the extract below from Kathleen Robertson Farmer’s comentary on Ruth in the NIB series may shed more clear light than you want, but it will at least answer the question. Peace and hope, Nathan Ruth 3:4-7. The storyteller uses “uncover,” “feet,” and “lie down” both in Naomi’s instructions and in the description of Ruth’s actions (w. 4, 7). In Hebrew, each of these words carries suggestive associations that are not obvious in English translations. Before the reader tries to decide what Naomi wants to happen on the threshing floor, some attention must be given to the secondary freight these words must have carried in the minds of a Hebrew-speaking audience. Like the English word “sleep,” the word (sakab, “lie down”) can be used in an innocent manner. But the word is also frequently used to imply sexual intercourse (e.g., Gen 19:33-35; 30:15-16; 38:26). Similarly, the word translated “uncover” (gala) assumes sexual overtones when it is used in combination with words such t as “nakedness” (erwa), as in laws governing sexual relationships (Lev 18:6-19). “Nakedness” in such contexts seems to be a euphemism for genitalia (see Isa 47:3). However, in other combinations, the same root meaning of “uncover” is carried over into the realm of religious experience, where it becomes a technical term for “revelation” (as in Deut 29:29; Isa 40:5; 53:1). In Deut 27:20, gala means “removed” (the man who “lies down” [sakab] with his father’s wife is cursed, because he has “removed” [gala] his father’s “wing” or garment [kanap]). But in other contexts, gala becomes a political or historical term when it refers to a person who is “removed” from the land (taken into captivity or exile), as in 2 Kgs 25:21 and Jer 52:27. And in the account of Ezra’s post-exilic campaign to eliminate all marriages between Israelite men and foreign women, this same root is used a collective noun (gola), designating those who had returned from exile (see Ezra 9:4). By juxtaposing the similar-sounding words gala (“uncover,” “reveal,” “remove”) and “ga’al” (“recover,” “redeem,” “restore), the narrator encourages the audience to consider ways in which “uncovering” (with all its possible innuendoes) can lead to “recovering”-to the redemption of what was lost. Naomi tells Ruth to uncover Boaz’s “feet” (or the place where his feet are), rather than his “nakedness,” but the word translated “feet” is also commonly used as a euphemism meaning “private parts.” It would be more accurate, then, to translate the word as “lower body” than “feet.” Modern translations sometimes substitute modern euphemisms, so that the reader of an English version is seldom aware of the way the word “feet” functions in the Hebrew text. Thus, for instance, both the NIV and the NRSV use “relieving himself,” where the Hebrew idiom says, literally, “uncovering his feet” (see, e.g., Judg 3:24; I Sam 24:3), the NRSV of Ezek 16:25 says, “offering yourself [lit.. your feet] to every passerby,” and Deut 28:25 says “the afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs [lit., her feet].”