Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 47:29
Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh. An oath sworn on the organ of generation, not literally the thigh.
Genesis 47:29, in every translation this tool compares.
English keeps a handful of body-part euphemisms too, swear on your life, cross your heart, phrases everyone understands are not literally about hearts or lives being physically handled. Thigh functions the same way here, a polite substitution for the procreative organs, tying an oath about burial and lineage to the part of the body most associated with generations yet to come.
Because the oath gesture Jacob demands of Joseph, a hand placed under his thigh, is a euphemism most premodern and modern interpreters agree refers to the genitals, tying the promise directly to lineage and covenant rather than to a body part chosen at random.
Every version reads thigh, correctly translating the Hebrew word, though few flag for a modern reader that the gesture is a recognized euphemism rather than an arbitrary physical formality.
יָרֵךְ yarech (thigh) · H3409
Yarech, thigh, functions here, as it does at Genesis 24:2 for Abraham's servant, as a euphemistic reference to the genitals, the seat of generative power and lineage; Rashi and the wider Jewish exegetical tradition read the gesture as touching the sign of circumcision itself, binding the oath to the covenant marked in the flesh. The gesture appears only in these two oath scenes in Genesis, both involving a solemn promise about descendants and inheritance.
English thigh names an ordinary body part with no euphemistic weight at all, so a modern reader has no built-in signal that the gesture is a delicate substitution for something more intimate, tying the promise to lineage and covenant rather than to an arbitrary physical ritual.
When an oath gesture in Hebrew narrative involves an unusual body part, check whether ancient interpreters read it euphemistically before assuming the literal reading is complete. Genesis uses this exact gesture only twice, both times for solemn promises about descendants.
Thigh is the literal word, and every version renders it that way without dispute. The euphemistic reading, genitals as the seat of lineage, tied to the covenant sign of circumcision, is the dominant traditional interpretation and fits both scenes' shared focus on descendants and inheritance far better than a literal, arbitrary reading of the gesture would.
- The same gesture at Genesis 24:2, Abraham's servant swearing about Isaac's marriage
- Rashi's reading connecting the gesture to the sign of circumcision
