So did Eglon poop his britches or not?


Abstract:

Body:
Here is the story of Ehud, the Left-Handed Bathroom Assassin.

When Ehud the Left-Handed Bathroom Assassin kills King Eglon, there is a particularly gory description. Ehud plunges the sword so deep into Eglon's abdomen that "the fat [closes] over the hilt," and Ehud cannot pull the blade back out. Pretty nasty, no?

But then there is this added detail from the New Revised Standard Version in verse 22: "and the dirt came out."

The dirt?

Let me first say that I never learned Hebrew, and only had two semesters of New Testament Greek. What I learned from my brief exposure to Biblical languages was this: there are people who will spend their entire lives studying these amazing languages, and I am not one of those people. I admire anyone who can translate on the fly, exegeting straight out of a Greek New Testament or a Hebrew TANAKH. But I also admire concert cellists, and I will never be one of them, either.

That said, I believe I can read enough between the lines to know when someone is fudging a translation. What happens most often, I think, is that good, religious people let their sense of propriety overcome their translation philosophy.

See, if you are familiar with Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or other folks who wrote more than 200 years ago, you know that dirt is a euphemism for doo-doo. Poopy. Number 2. Which makes perfect sense given the rest of the story: The guards see that the doors are locked, and assume that Eglon is "covering his feet," which is another euphemism for doing number 2. Natuarally, if they caught a whiff of what had happened, they would assume Eglon was having a bowel movement. This extra gory detail makes perfect sense from a physiological perspective as well - when you die, you don't have bowel control anymore.

Let's recap the evidence for this being a story about general poopiness:
1. Eglon is really, really fat. He is a big man with big appetites. For some reason, the author thought this an important detail.
2. Ehud is left-handed. Sinister. I don't necessarily believe the folk history that one wiped with the left hand, but who knows?
3. They are apparently in "the cool roof chamber."
4. The guards think he is using the potty.
5. Ehud escapes out the "hole" - a porch or a latrine? [edit: My mistake. It seems, according to the NIB, that the "latrine" possibility refers to the same confusing wording about "the dirt" or "the fundament." So the phrase in question could either be about poop or about a latrine, but it cannot be both. At least, that's what I infer as a non-Hebrew-speaking guy.]

Some of this is circumstantial, obviously. But it seems pretty clear that poop is an element in this story. So why does it get treated with such ambiguity in some other translations?

The NIV says that the sword "came out his back."
The NKJV says, "his entrails came out."
The ASV goes for "it [the sword?] came out behind."
Darby (a "literal" translation) says "it came out between his legs."
And perhaps most telling: Eugene Peterson's' Message omits the detail completely. Never happened. Not worth mentioning.

The NASB is one that goes for "the refuse came out." The NLT says that "his bowels emptied."

Now, I understand from those literal translations that there is some ambiguity in the wording of this text. But what I cannot figure is why some translators avoid the rather obvious details. Well, that is a bit untruthful. I can figure it out. At least, I have a theory.

I'm going to pick on The Message for a minute, because it is easiest. Let me say that I really, really enjoy this translation. When you browse through the Proverbs, Peterson's translation helps you catch some of the wit that you might otherwise miss. He goes for the straightforward "whores" in place of "prostitutes" when Jesus talks about who will enter the Kingdom first.

But then here, with Ehud, he simply omits the potty reference. Similarly, when you deal with the really erotic parts of the Song of Songs, he changes the woman's bedtime ritual of taking off her clothes to putting on a nightgown. So, confusingly, instead of being undressed... she's dressed. I guess what I find hard to understand is how a guy who has no problem saying whore suddenly feels dirty when he talks about sex or going poo-poo. Eugene! Some of us watch The Sopranos! We can take it!

As anyone can tell by the title of this weblog, and by the tenor of my writing, I tend to like shocking language. Maybe it is because I am juvenile. I have the sense of humor and the heart of a middle school kid who still thinks boogers are funny. If God is anything like some people in the church, I am sure there is plenty of heavenly eye-rolling and divine head-shaking at the antics of this bratty little preacher.

But in spite of my immature interest in bathroom humor and prurient material, I think this is an important point: People make deliberate choices about how to present Biblical material, and are as biased by their preconceived notions of what is "proper" as they are by their theology. This is nothing groundbreaking for anyone who studies the Bible, I am sure. Yet here you have an obvious case of a translator ignoring elements of the story considered to be too earthy, too scatological, or too irrelevant for good church people. When confronted with the Greek coprian, does the translator go for fertilizer, refuse, garbage, manure, or sh*t? When Paul says he counts all his Jewish credentials as coprian, what word best expresses what he means? What about when Jesus is telling the parable of the farmer and the barren tree? I live with farmers. I've heard farmers talk. They do not say manure.

I'm not saying we need to fill the Bible with profanities. But I do think the language is often more vulgar (and more intense) than church people believe. Of course, we practice censorship all the time from the pulpit. I have never ever ever heard a sermon on Ehud. Nor have I preached one. I'm not sure every text needs to be preached - but every text should be in the Bible. I think translators are often saying to themselves, "heavens! We can't say this in the pulpit!" This is not necessarily a bad thing. The Bible is properly read and discussed in a community of believers. What I object to is censoring of the Bible. I think God has important things to say - even when they are about doo-doo.

What does it say about God if our Holy Scriptures have scenes in them that could have been written by Quentin Tarantino? What does it say about God if there is genuine sexual pleasure in the Song of Songs? What does it say about God if there are grotesque passages involving poopy in the Bible?

Posted: Mon - November 21, 2005 at 10:51 PM           |

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