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Bible Encyclopedias
Eunuch
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or This word, which we have adopted from the Greek, has, in its literal sense, the harmless meaning of 'bed-keeper,' i.e. one who has the charge of beds and bed-chambers; but as only persons deprived of their virility have, from the most ancient times, been employed in Oriental harems, and as such persons are employed almost exclusively in this kind of service, the word 'bed-keeper' became synonymous with 'castratus.' In fact there are few eastern languages in which the condition of those persons is more directly expressed than by the name of some post or station in which they are usually found. The admission to the recesses of the harem, which is in fact the domestic establishment of the prince, gives the eunuchs such peculiar advantages of access to the royal ear and person, as often enables them to exercise an important influence, and to rise to stations of great trust and power in Eastern courts. Hence it would seem that, in Egypt, for instance, the word which indicated an eunuch was applied to any court officer, whether a castratus or not (; ).
Authority would be superfluous in proof of a matter of such common knowledge as the employment of eunuchs, and especially of black eunuchs, in the courts and harems of the ancient and modern East. A noble law, which, however, evinces the prevalence of the custom prior to Moses, made castration illegal among the Jews (; ). But the Hebrew princes did not choose to understand this law as interdicting the use of those who had been made eunuchs by others; for that they had them, and that they were sometimes, if not generally, blacks, and that the chief of them was regarded as holding an important and influential post, appears from;;;;;;; . Samuel was aware that eunuchs would not fail to be employed in a regal court; for he thus forewarns the people, 'He (the king) will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyard, and give to his eunuchs [A.V. 'officers'] and to his servants' ().
Under these circumstances, the eunuchs were probably obtained from a great distance, and at an expense which must have limited their employment to the royal establishment: and this is very much the case even at present.
In , the term 'eunuch' is applied figuratively to persons naturally impotent. In the same verse mention is also made of persons 'who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake;' which is a manifestly hyperbolical description of such as lived in voluntary abstinence (comp. ); although painful examples have occurred (as in the case of Origen) of a disposition to interpret the phrase too literally.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Eunuch'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/e/eunuch.html.
