The Bible: 40 Weirdest Expressions
The Bible has been translated so many times that the weirdness gets smoothed out. Modern editions say "he was angry" where the Hebrew says something far stranger. This is a report on the raw stuff: expressions that survived translation, or that only become visible when you go back to the source. No theology here, just the pure linguistic oddity.
1. 1. "He who pisseth against the wall" (1 Samuel 25:22, KJV)
Literally: mashtin beqir in Hebrew, "one who urinates against a wall." It just means "a male." David uses it as a way of saying "I will kill every last man." The KJV kept it raw. Modern translations sanitize it to "every male." The Hebrew is almost comedic in its bluntness.
2. 2. "His hand was heavy upon them with hemorrhoids" (1 Samuel 5:6, KJV)
God afflicts the Philistines who captured the Ark with 'ofalim, rendered "hemorrhoids" in many translations. Some scholars argue it means "tumors" or "swellings." Either way: God cursed an entire nation with rectal inflammation as a geopolitical move.
3. 3. "The skin of his face shone" (Exodus 34:29)
After Moses speaks with God, his face qaran: it "horned" or "radiated." The Hebrew root qeren means both "ray of light" and "horn." Jerome translated it as "horned" in the Latin Vulgate. That is why Michelangelo's Moses has horns. A single ambiguous verb, one of the most famous sculptures in the world.
4. 4. "Gird up your loins" (Job 38:3, 1 Kings 18:46, many others)
Literally: tuck your robe into your belt so you can run or fight. Fine. What is strange is how often God says it. "Gird up your loins like a man" is God's opening line when he finally speaks to Job. After 37 chapters of suffering. "Tuck in your robe, buddy."
5. 5. "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation" (Deuteronomy 23:2, KJV)
Ten generations. Scholars calculate that is roughly 300 years of exclusion for a sin you had nothing to do with. The Hebrew mamzer (bastard) is debated: some say it means child of adultery specifically, not just illegitimacy. The ten-generation clause is still strange.
6. 6. "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel" (Genesis 49:4)
Jacob's deathbed blessing to his firstborn Reuben. "You are as unstable as water." It is the oldest recorded dad insult in Western literature. Reuben had slept with his father's concubine. Jacob remembered. For decades. Then said it at the very end.
7. 7. "The LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled" (Genesis 6:6)
God regrets. The Hebrew wayyinnahem is the same root used when humans regret or grieve. God has an emotion he did not predict. Theologians have spent centuries explaining this away. The text just says it plainly.
8. 8. "He put his hand under his thigh" (Genesis 24:2, 47:29)
When Abraham's servant takes an oath, he places his hand "under the thigh" of Abraham. Jacob asks Joseph to do the same. The "thigh" here is almost certainly a euphemism for genitals. Oaths were sworn by touching the most sacred thing a man had: the source of his lineage. No translation says this outright. They all just say "thigh."
9. 9. "And God remembered Rachel" (Genesis 30:22)
As if he had forgotten her. The same formula appears for Noah: "God remembered Noah." Theologians say "remember" in Hebrew means "to act on behalf of," not "to recall after forgetting." But the plain reading is wild: the omniscient God remembered people.
10. 10. "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" (Exodus 23:19, repeated three times)
This single verse, appearing three times across the Torah, became the entire kosher dairy separation system. Do not boil a goat in its mother's milk. Why this specific instruction, repeated three times? Scholars debate forever. The rabbis built an entire legal architecture on it.
11. 11. "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14)
God's name, when Moses asks. The Hebrew is Ehyeh asher Ehyeh: "I will be what I will be" or "I am what I am" or "I cause to be what I cause to be." It is grammatically a first-person imperfect of the verb "to be." It might be a non-answer. Or a tautology. Or the most profound sentence ever uttered. Nobody agrees.
12. 12. "His belly was filled with the east wind" (Job 15:2)
Eliphaz insults Job by saying his wisdom is just hot air from the east. The east wind in Hebrew thought was the worst kind: ruach qadim, dry, scorching, destructive. "You are full of desert wind" as an insult. It hits differently in a pre-air-conditioning world.
13. 13. "The sons of God came in unto the daughters of men" (Genesis 6:4, KJV)
The Nephilim passage. "Sons of God" (benei Elohim) mated with human women and produced giants. Who are the sons of God? Fallen angels (1 Enoch tradition)? Divine court members? Rulers? The text leaves it completely open and then moves on, as if it is a perfectly normal thing to mention before describing Noah.
14. 14. "He smote them hip and thigh" (Judges 15:8, KJV)
Samson kills Philistines. The expression shaq 'al yarech is literally "leg over thigh" or "thigh upon shank." It appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Scholars believe it describes a wrestling-style slaughter. The KJV's "hip and thigh" is just as strange in English. It became an idiom for utter defeat.
15. 15. "I will strike every horse with confusion and its rider with madness" (Zechariah 12:4)
God's weapon in this apocalyptic passage is targeted equine confusion. Not fire, not plague. Specifically: the horses get confused, the riders go mad. There is something almost bureaucratic about the precision here.
16. 16. "She lusted after her lovers, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses" (Ezekiel 23:20, KJV)
Ezekiel describing Jerusalem's idolatry as sexual allegory. This verse passed censors for centuries because it was "Scripture." It is also the reason Ezekiel was almost excluded from the Hebrew canon. The rabbis of Jamnia debated it. It survived.
17. 17. "And Ehud reached with his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade" (Judges 3:21-22, KJV)
The assassination of King Eglon. The detail that "the fat closed upon the blade" is one of the most viscerally specific descriptions in ancient literature. The writer clearly found this impressive. The servants outside thought the king was "covering his feet" (using the toilet) and waited. He was dead.
18. 18. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" (Jeremiah 13:23)
God asks Jeremiah this rhetorically to say Judah cannot change its evil nature. The comparison is between a nation's moral character and skin color, which makes modern readers uncomfortable for obvious reasons. The verse is still there.
19. 19. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2)
The Hebrew is hevel havelim: "vapor of vapors." Not vanity as in pride. Vapor. Mist. Breath. Everything is breath. The Preacher is not saying life is worthless; he is saying it is insubstantial, it dissipates. "Breath of breaths" would be more accurate. The English "vanity" has completely changed what people think this book is about.
20. 20. "And he took butter and milk and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them" (Genesis 18:8)
Abraham serves God and two angels a meal of butter, milk, and veal. Kosher law (derived partly from the "don't boil a kid in its mother's milk" rule) forbids mixing meat and dairy. Abraham, the first patriarch, fed God a milk-and-meat combination. Rabbis argue about this constantly.
21. 21. "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent" (Numbers 23:19)
And yet, three verses earlier in Genesis 6, God regrets making humans. And in Exodus, God "repents" of a plague after Moses argues with him. The Bible contains both claims. Theologians call this "anthropopathism." The text just contradicts itself.
22. 22. "The wicked flee when no man pursueth" (Proverbs 28:1)
One of the strangest psychological observations in ancient literature. The guilty run from nothing. They manufacture their own persecution. This was written roughly 2,700 years ago.
23. 23. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Mark 4:9, and many times)
Jesus says this repeatedly. He is speaking to people who demonstrably have ears. The phrase implies there is another kind of hearing: spiritual, interior. But the formula is strange. It is almost a verbal tic in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Revelation all use it. It sounds like a radio sign-off.
24. 24. "There is no new thing under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Written in a book that is itself part of a canon claiming to reveal things previously unknown. The Preacher says nothing is new. The Torah says God revealed a new covenant. These books sit side by side. Nobody resolved this.
25. 25. "Loose the bands of Orion" (Job 38:31)
God asks Job if he can loosen the chains of the constellation Orion. In ancient Near Eastern cosmology, Orion was bound. God is the one who bound him. God is now asking Job if he could undo what God did. The cosmology is stranger than most readers realize: stars in chains, Pleiades "bound" in their cluster, the zodiac under divine lock.
26. 26. "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD" (Deuteronomy 23:1, KJV)
Men with crushed testicles or removed penises are barred from the assembly. "Wounded in the stones" is KJV for damaged genitals. This creates a theological problem later when Isaiah 56 explicitly invites eunuchs into God's house. The two passages directly contradict each other.
27. 27. "God came to Balaam at night" (Numbers 22:20)
Fine. Then Balaam's donkey speaks to him. Then the angel of the LORD stands in the road. Then God is angry that Balaam is going, even though God told him to go. Then the angel almost kills Balaam. The sequence of divine instructions and divine anger in this chapter defies any linear reading. Balaam's donkey has better theological insight than the prophet.
28. 28. "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day" (Genesis 32:24)
Jacob wrestles a "man" all night. The man cannot defeat him. The man touches Jacob's hip socket and dislocates it. Jacob demands a blessing. The man gives it. Later the text calls this entity God. Jacob names the place "I have seen God face to face." God lost a wrestling match. Jacob won a limp and a new name.
29. 29. "And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah" (Genesis 25:2)
Abraham's second wife Keturah, introduced after Sarah's death, has six sons with him. Abraham is approximately 140 years old at this point by the text's own chronology. The narrative offers no comment on this. It is just listed.
30. 30. "The spirit of the LORD came upon him, and the hair of his head began to grow again" (Judges 16:22)
Samson in prison, blind, grinding grain. The text reports his hair growing as if it is a news bulletin. The reader is supposed to understand the implication. The Philistines apparently did not.
31. 31. "Woe to the women that sew pillows to all armholes" (Ezekiel 13:18, KJV)
God curses female prophets who sew magic armband pillows. The Hebrew kesatot is unknown: it appears only here in the entire Bible. Scholars believe these were some kind of divination accessory. "Pillows to all armholes" is one of those phrases that sounds invented but is a sincere translation attempt.
32. 32. "I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant" (Psalm 119:176)
The very last verse of the longest chapter in the Bible. Psalm 119 is 176 verses of elaborate praise for the Torah; every verse in every 8-verse section begins with the same Hebrew letter (it is an acrostic). After all that: "I got lost. Come find me." The ending undercuts the entire project in a single line.
33. 33. "And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings 2:11)
Elijah does not die. He is taken up in a chariot of fire and a whirlwind. No death, no burial. This happens to two people in the Bible: Elijah and Enoch ("God took him," Genesis 5:24). Both just leave. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all spent centuries arguing about where they went and whether they will come back.
34. 34. "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14)
The Greek is ho logos sarx egeneto: "the logos became meat." Sarx is flesh, meat, physical substance. John chose the most material word available. Not "body," not "form": meat. The eternal rational principle of the cosmos became meat and set up a tent among us (eskenosen: "tabernacled"). The metaphysics of this are dizzying and the vocabulary is deliberately shocking.
35. 35. "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet" (Revelation 1:10)
John of Patmos hears a trumpet voice behind him. He turns and sees lampstands. Among the lampstands is a being with hair "white as wool, as white as snow," eyes "as a flame of fire," feet "like fine bronze, as if refined in a furnace," and a voice "as the sound of many waters." Out of his mouth comes a two-edged sword. John faints. This is the resurrected Christ.
36. 36. "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing" (Ecclesiastes 3:5)
The famous "turn turn turn" passage. Between "a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them" (which nobody has ever satisfactorily explained) and "a time to embrace": the rhythm is so musical that the content stops mattering. Qoheleth was a poet first. The "scattering stones" verse has been debated for two thousand years. Some say it refers to sex. Nobody knows.
37. 37. "She took the nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground" (Judges 4:21, KJV)
Jael, a woman, kills the enemy general Sisera by hammering a tent peg through his skull while he sleeps. The text describes her going "softly." Deborah's victory song in the next chapter calls Jael "blessed above women." This is presented as heroic. The detail of going "softly" is unforgettable.
38. 38. "But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt" (Genesis 19:26)
One glance. Instantaneous. No explanation of mechanism. The text does not say she disobeyed in a dramatic way: she just looked. The punishment is transformation into a mineral. Jesus uses her as an example ("remember Lot's wife," Luke 17:32) without explaining it either. She is never given a name in the text.
39. 39. "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections... and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly" (Romans 1:26-27, KJV)
Paul's most explicit condemnation. The Greek para phusin ("against nature") was a standard Stoic philosophical term. Paul uses Stoic vocabulary to make a Jewish argument. The phrase "working that which is unseemly" (ten aschemosune katergazomenoi) is a euphemism for a euphemism. This is also the only verse in the entire Bible that mentions female same-sex behavior.
40. 40. "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one" (Luke 22:36)
Jesus, hours before his arrest, tells the disciples to buy swords. They say they have two. He says "it is enough." Then, when Peter uses one of those swords to cut off a man's ear, Jesus heals the ear and says "no more of this." He told them to buy swords, they got two swords, he used neither sword, he stopped the one sword that was used. What the swords were for remains one of the genuinely unresolved questions of New Testament scholarship.
The Bible is a library, not a book. It was assembled over roughly a thousand years, in three languages, across wildly different genres. The weirdness is not accidental. It is what happens when you compile ancient legal codes, poetry, apocalyptic visions, court histories, and philosophical essays and call them one thing. The smoothness you get in modern translations is the editorial work of centuries. The original is stranger.