the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Foot
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or Regel (רֶגֶל, Strong's #7272), “foot; leg.” Regel is a word found in many Semitic languages, referring to a part of the body. In the Old Testament, the word is used a total of 245 times, with its first occurrence in Gen. 8:9.
Regel may refer to the “foot” of a human (Gen. 18:4), an animal (Ezek. 29:11), a bird (Gen. 8:9), or even a table (a rare usage; Exod. 25:26, KJV). The word’s usage is also extended to signify the “leg”: “And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders” (1 Sam. 17:6). Regel is used euphemistically for the genital area; thus urine is “water of the legs” (2 Kings 18:27) and pubic hair is “hair of the legs” (Isa. 7:20). The foot’s low place gave rise to an idiom: “From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head” (cf. Deut. 28:35), signifying the “total extent of the body.”
“Foot” may be a metaphor of “arrogance”: “Let not the foot of pride come against me, and let not the hand of the wicked remove me” (Ps. 36:11). It is used to represent Israel: “Neither will I make the feet of Israel move any more out of the land which I gave their fathers; only if they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them” (2 Kings 21:8).
In anthropomorphic expressions, God has “feet.” Thus God revealed Himself with a pavement of sapphire as clear as the sky under His “feet” (Exod. 24:10). The authors of Scripture portray God as having darkness (Ps. 18:9) and clouds of dust beneath His “feet” (Nah. 1:3), and sending a plague out from His “feet” (Hab. 3:5). His “feet” are said to rest on the earth (Isa. 66:1); the temple is also the resting place of His “feet”: “… And I will make the place of my feet glorious” (Isa. 60:13). Similarly, the seraphim had “feet,” which they covered with a pair of wings as they stood in the presence of God (Isa. 6:2); the cherubim had “feet” that Ezekiel described (Ezek. 1:7).
The Septuagint gives the following translations: pous (“foot”) and skelos (“leg”).
These files are public domain.
Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Foot'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/f/foot.html. 1940.
