I am not studied enough in Hebrew to go into arguments concerning מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה, but considering it is a phrase that does not show up elsewhere in the Bible or contemporary Hebrew texts, I think reading it as unambiguously referring to consensual sex between men is the mind reading. Just like ἀρσενοκοίτης, we are trying to parse words with complicated meanings seated in a very specific cultural context.
אִשָּׁה means women, adult female. מִשְׁכְּבֵי means fucking. Both words are everywhere in that same chapter. Also if you want to be fully pedantic you don’t even need the accent marks for both. Why didn’t you include the entire sentence?
The only word you can argue with is זָכָר֙ which means male not just adult male. This is not a limiting term this is a broad term, this means eunchs and this means guys from other tribes, or spirits in the form of human males. There was a word for boy (יֶלֶד) which is not used, a word for slave (עֶבֶד) also not used, and a word for male angels also not used. The authors deliberately choose a word that would cover all human form males and combined with the rules against punish of a rape victim would result in only consensual gay male sex being banned.
Hebrew really isn’t that hard. 25 letters, about 100 roots, heavy dependence on prefixes and suffixes. It took a fair amount of self-study before I got to the point where I could get through the Book of Job word for word. If a person as bad as languages as me can do it I am sure you can.
The hard part is when you get to a word that is used like once and you see these really long debates online about what it means, but for these basic words like male, sex, boy, and slave they are all over.
I am not studied enough in Hebrew to go into arguments concerning מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה, but considering it is a phrase that does not show up elsewhere in the Bible or contemporary Hebrew texts, I think reading it as unambiguously referring to consensual sex between men is the mind reading. Just like ἀρσενοκοίτης, we are trying to parse words with complicated meanings seated in a very specific cultural context.
אִשָּׁה means women, adult female. מִשְׁכְּבֵי means fucking. Both words are everywhere in that same chapter. Also if you want to be fully pedantic you don’t even need the accent marks for both. Why didn’t you include the entire sentence?
Here https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9921/jewish/Chapter-20.htm
The only word you can argue with is זָכָר֙ which means male not just adult male. This is not a limiting term this is a broad term, this means eunchs and this means guys from other tribes, or spirits in the form of human males. There was a word for boy (יֶלֶד) which is not used, a word for slave (עֶבֶד) also not used, and a word for male angels also not used. The authors deliberately choose a word that would cover all human form males and combined with the rules against punish of a rape victim would result in only consensual gay male sex being banned.
Hebrew really isn’t that hard. 25 letters, about 100 roots, heavy dependence on prefixes and suffixes. It took a fair amount of self-study before I got to the point where I could get through the Book of Job word for word. If a person as bad as languages as me can do it I am sure you can.
The hard part is when you get to a word that is used like once and you see these really long debates online about what it means, but for these basic words like male, sex, boy, and slave they are all over.