“We have a little sister, And she hath no breasts: What shall we do for our sister In the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, We will build upon her a turret of silver: And if she be a door, We will inclose her with boards of cedar.”
Job, cursing the day of his birth, says (Job 3 : 1–10):
“Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man child conceived.... Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning: Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.”
Referring to this passage, the Babylonian Talmud (Treatise Bechoroth, 45 a) quotes Rabbi Eliezer as saying, “Just as a house has doors, so also a woman has doors.” Others say: “Just as a house has keys [_miphteakh_, literally ‘opener’], so the woman has a key; for it is said (Gen. 30 : 22) ‘God hearkened to her, and opened [a play upon _patakh_, ‘to open,’ and _miphteakh_, ‘key’] her womb.’” The famous Rabbi Akibah says: “Just as a house has hinges, so there are hinges to a wife; for it is written (1 Sam. 4 : 19), ‘She kneeled and gave birth, for her hinges had turned’ [translating _ṣîrîm_ (or _tseereem_) as ‘hinges’ instead of ‘pains’; the word has the former meaning in Proverbs 26 : 14, ‘As the door turneth upon its hinges, so doth the sluggard upon his bed.’]”
The Talmudic treatise Middâ (Mishna § 2, 5) explains the different parts of the womb under the metaphors _khĕdĕr_, “interior chamber;” _pʾrosdôr_, “vestibule;” _ʿalîyyâ_, “upper story.”[669] Professor Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr., in citing these metaphors, suggests that they coincide with the Arabic and Egyptian custom of using a key in the marriage rite, as described at page 244.
Critics have long puzzled over the seemingly contradictory uses of the Hebrew word _pôth_ in two places in the Old Testament; and the connection of “woman” and “door” with the parts thereof, above suggested, may aid in resolving the difficulty. At 1 Kings 7 : 50, in a list of the holy vessels of the house of the Lord, there are mentioned “the hinges (Heb., _pôthôth_), both for the doors of the inner house, the most holy place, and for the doors of the house, to wit, of the temple, of gold.” At Isaiah 3 : 17 the same word _poth_ is translated “their secret parts,” in a reference to the humiliation of “the daughters of Zion.” It has been suggested by some that there was a corruption of the text in Isaiah. (See Delitzsch and Dillmann, in their commentaries at this place.) Yet in view of the rabbinical uses of language, the text would seem to be trustworthy. _Pôth_ is an “opening,” of a _woman_ or of a _door_. Additional light is thrown on the use of the term _pôth_ as “opening” and as “hinge,” or “socket,” when we bear in mind that the hinge of an Oriental door was a hole, or cavity, or door socket, on which the door turned, in order to give an opening or entrance. Often these door sockets were made of metal,–bronze, silver, or gold.[670] Sometimes the entire thresholds, in which were these sockets or “basons,” were of metal. If, however, the threshold was of stone or wood, the socket, or a plate with a depression in it, was of metal. The _pôth_, therefore, when referring to a door, was the metal plate or socket in the threshold on which the door turned as on a hinge.