Summary: In ancient Hebrew culture, swearing an oath involved placing a hand under the thigh, which symbolically represented the male reproductive organ. This act was seen as a serious promise, often linked to procreation and the continuation of family lines. The significance of this gesture connects to the idea of covenant and divine presence in the relationship between God and the patriarchs.
There’s an immense distance, cultural even more than chronological, between the ancient understanding of the penis’ significance as a token of human-divine covenant, and today’s coarse hyper-masculine fetishization of it—even though, as the ball-grabbing trope reminds us, it’s by far the most vulnerable bit of the male anatomy. (View Highlight)