shorer

What part of the woman's body Song of Songs 7:2 compares to a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. The description moves upward from her feet, so this word stands between the thighs and the belly, and the b-colon's word for belly can also mean womb. Two undisputed points frame the debate: the vessel named is a wide, deep, two-handled mixing bowl, and the modifier evokes the moon, whether as a full round or a crescent. What the bowl is compared to is disputed, and the field divides along methodological lines rather than by consensus.

• contestedThe navel, admired as a deep, rounded feature of the body. The comparison turns on the shape and holding capacity of the bowl rather than on the physiology of the body part, since it is the bowl and not the navel that is supposed to contain wine; Egyptian art likewise treats the female navel as a prominent aesthetic feature, every ancient version read "navel" here, and no post-biblical Hebrew or Aramaic text ever uses this word for the genitals.; Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 159; Richard S. Hess, Song of Songs (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms, 2005), 196; Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 2001); Duane Garrett, Song of Songs (Word Biblical Commentary 23B, 2004); Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs (Hermeneia, 1990); Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation (Random House, 1995); G. Lloyd Carr, The Song of Solomon (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, 1984)
• contestedThe woman's genitals, by a euphemism well attested in ancient Near Eastern art and love poetry. Four arguments converge: the sequence of body parts leaves this word in the position of the pubic region, where a navel would duplicate the belly named in the next line; a vessel never lacking mixed wine suits arousal rather than a dry navel; Syrian and Palestinian terracotta figurines of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries before the common era place a bowl-like hollow interchangeably at navel or pubic region, and pendants from Ugarit and Tell el-Ajjul show trees growing from either zone; and Sumerian sacred-marriage hymns repeatedly imagine the goddess's vulva as a bowl or horn from which the god drinks.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (Anchor Bible 7C, 1977), 617-618; Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs (Continental Commentaries, 1994); J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs (Old Testament Library, 2005); Daniel Lys, Le plus beau chant de la creation (Vetus Testamentum Supplements 17, 1969); J. A. Loader, "Exegetical Erotica to Canticles 7:2-6", Journal for Semitics 10 (2001); Andre LaCocque, Romance She Wrote: A Hermeneutical Essay on Song of Songs (Trinity Press International, 1998); Scott B. Noegel and Gary A. Rendsburg, Solomon's Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs (Society of Biblical Literature, 2009)
• contestedThe line deliberately hovers between the navel and the region below it, so that forcing one anatomical answer misreads how the imagery works. A thirteenth-century Jewish gloss already recorded exactly this double reading, explaining the word as the navel, or else not quite the navel but what lies below it. On a related reading the body assembled in this description is hyperbolic and deliberately strange, so the question of what work the composite body does matters more than settling the anatomy.; Karl Moller, "Reading Song of Songs as Poetry", in Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom (Eerdmans, 2003); Fiona C. Black, The Artifice of Love: Grotesque Bodies in the Song of Songs (T&T Clark, 2009); Judeo-Romance gloss on Song of Songs 7:3, Bodleian MS Hunt. 268 (thirteenth century)

Whether the rare word for the navel stood in Proverbs 3:8 at all, and what it means if it did. The line reads "it shall be healing to your ___ and refreshment to your bones". Two old emendations replace the rare word with a common one for flesh or body. The case for emendation rests on the Greek and Syriac readings "body", on the fact that flesh paired with bones is a firmly attested Hebrew pairing while navel paired with bones occurs nowhere else, and on the easy loss of a single letter after the preposition. The case against rests on the Latin and Aramaic versions, on the agreement of all Hebrew manuscripts, and on the defensibility of the navel standing for the whole body. Proverbs 3:8 is not preserved in either Proverbs scroll from Qumran, so those manuscripts do not decide it.

• contestedThe received Hebrew text stands: the word is the navel, named as the body's vital center and standing for the whole person. All Hebrew manuscripts read it, the Latin and Aramaic versions support it, and the medieval Jewish commentators explained it exactly this way, glossing it with the later ordinary word for navel. The freedom of the Greek translator of Proverbs is enough to explain the Greek reading "body" without positing a different Hebrew text.; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9 (Anchor Bible 18A, 2000); Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon (T&T Clark, 1874); Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 2004)
• contestedThe text is damaged and should be corrected to a common word for flesh or body. The Greek reads "body", the Syriac and Arabic agree, the pairing of flesh with bones is standard Hebrew poetic practice while navel with bones is otherwise unknown, and the graphic step from the fuller phrase to the shorter one is a plausible copying error.; William McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach (Old Testament Library, 1970); Crawford H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs (International Critical Commentary, 1899); Richard J. Clifford, Proverbs (Old Testament Library, 1999); Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs (Word Biblical Commentary 22, 1998); Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, apparatus at Proverbs 3:8