EUNUCH 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 ex pressed 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 enable them to exer cise 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 castrates or not. The word which describes Joseph's master as `an officer of Pharaoh' (Gen. xxxvii. 36 ; xxxix. t) is D'1C1 saris, which is used in Hebrew to denote an eunuch ; and in these places is rendered N11, ' prince,' in the Targum, and dvaxos, `eunuch,' in the Sep tuagint.
Authority would be superfluous in proof of a matter of such common knowledge as the employ ment of eunuchs, and especially of black eunuchs in the courts and harems of the ancient and modem East. A noble law, which, however, evinces the prevalence of the custom prior to Moses, made castration illegal among the Jews (Lev. xxi. 20 ;
Deut. xxiii. r). 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 some times, if not generally, blacks, and that the chief of them was regarded as holding an important and influential post, appears from t Kings xxii. 9 ; 2 Kings yid. 6 ; ix. 32, 33 ; xx. IS ; xxiii. t t ; Jer. xxxviii. 7 ; xxxix, t6; xli. 16. 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' (t Sam. viii. 15).
Under these circumstances, the eunuchs were probably obtained from a great distance, and at an expense which must have limited their employ ment to the royal establishment ; and this is very much the ease even at present.
In Matt. nix. rz, 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. Matt. v. 29, 30) ; although painful examples have occurred (as in the case of Origen) of a dispo sition to interpret the phrase too literally, and thus to act upon the following injunction, or permission, Let him who is capable of doing this, do ataainepos xu.ipeiv xcopetrco.—J. K.