Dung in the KJV

This will be a post about shit.

I'm grateful to Claude Mariottini for giving me a foil to respond to. He is very gentle. He corrects false readings as best he can for those who follow him. His latest post is on the verbal structure of Jezebel. It is fascinating - and gives potential insight into political and social relationships in the times of the kings. He explores a play on words with the name that has become Jezebel.

He writes: The identification of Jezebel’s name with dung is found in 2 Kings 9:37: “the body of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel, so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.”

There are four different Hebrew stems that KJV glosses as dung. I thought when I read this from Claude, Surely I will see this play on words in the Hebrew. But the word translated as dung in this passage is דֹּמֶן d-m-n compost - perhaps offal would be a gloss that did not overlap with other words for dung פֶּרֶשׁ, and גָּלָל and צאה and אַשְׁפֹּת in the KJV. I use manure for prw, dung and dunghill for gll, filth for xah and dump / garbage dump for awpt. There are other choices that might be better, but I see no need whatsoever to overlap these five different words to the same English gloss. That's one of my many beefs with the KJV. It is just not accurate. I may be wrong, but I am consistently wrong and my mistakes will be transparent and changeable. There are lots of synonyms for dung in English.

Now here's the SimHebrew (in my experimental reading form) for this verse about Jezebel.

^lz vhiith nblt aizbl cdomn yl-pni hwdh bklq izryal
awr la-iamru zat aizbl

I liked Claude's story - and it is referenced elsewhere on the internet, but it has nothing to do with a Hebrew root zbl. You won't find that root in this verse for dung. The root here is dmn. This I have rendered as compost. If there is a play on words, it is outside the text of the Bible whatever language that is that has zebel as a word signifying ordure.

And the corpse of Jezebel will be as compost on the surface of the field in the division of Jezreel,
that they will not say, This is Jezebel.

You can find and critique all my glosses in the online concordance. Just look at the glossary. As you can see there, these words are not frequently used. 

There is another reference to human waste in Deuteronomy 23:14. Note how discreet it is. It uses a very common word as if we were deer or geese.

^id vitd thih lç yl-aznç
vhih bwbtç kux vkprt bh vwbt vcisit at-xiatç
^'tv ci ihvh alohiç mthlç bqrb mknç lhxilç vltt aoibiç lpniç vhih mknç qdow
vla -irah bç yrvvt dbr vwb makriç

And a peg you will have with your spade.

And it will be when you sit outside, you will dig deep with it, and will turn back and cover what comes out from you.

For Yahweh your God walks within your camp to deliver you, that he may give your enemies before you, so your camp will be holy,

and he will not see among you something exposed, and turn from following you.

Even the most mundane text has its own music

Deut 23 vv 14-15 Each of these verses has a unique sequence of accents