EUNUCH (fi'niik), (Heb. saw-recce' ; Gr.
This word, which we have adopted from the Greek, has, in its literal sense, the harmless mean ing of 'bed keeper,' i. e., one who has the charge of beds and bedchambers ; but as only persons deprived of their virility have, from the most an cient times, been employed in Oriental harems, and as such persons are employed almost exclu sively in this kind of service, the word 'bed- keeper' became synonymous with 'castratus.' It 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 estab lishment of the prince gives the eunuchs such pe culiar advantages of access to the royal ear and person as often enables them to exercise an im portant 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. The word which describes Joseph's master as 'an officer of Pharaoh' (Gen. xxxvii :36: xxxix is saris, which is used in the Hebrew to denote an eunuch and in these places is rendered 'prince' in the Targum, and dvoi)xcn, 'eunuch,' in the Sep tuagint.
Authority would he superfluous in proof of a matter of such common knowledge as the em ployment of eunuchs, and especially of black eu nuchs 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 (Lev. xxi:2o; Deut. xxiii:i). 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 hold ing an important and influential post, appears from Kings xxu.. :9; 2 Kings viii :6; ix :32, 33; xx :18 ; xxiii :I ; Jer. xxxviii :7 ; xxxix :16 ; xli : 16. Samuel was aware that eunuchs would not fail to be employed in a regal court, for lie 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' (I Sam. viii :15).
Figurative In Matt. xix :r2 the term 'eu nuch' 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 heaveros sake ;' which is a manifestly hyperbolical description of such as lived in voluntary abstinence (Comp. Matt. 29, EUODIA the correct form of Eno rims (which see).