Footnote 667: Deut. 22 : 13–21. ----- WOMAN AS A DOOR. In different languages and among various peoples there is, as already suggested,[668] an apparent connection between the terms, and the corresponding ideas, of “woman” and “door,” that would seem to be a confirmation of the fact that the earliest altar was at the threshold of the woman, and of the door. Thus, in the Song of Songs 8 : 8, 9:– “We have a little sister, And she hath no breasts: What shall we do for our sister In the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, We will build upon her a turret of silver: And if she be a door, We will inclose her with boards of cedar.” Job, cursing the day of his birth, says (Job 3 : 1–10): “Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man child conceived.... Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning: Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.” Referring to this passage, the Babylonian Talmud (Treatise Bechoroth, 45 a) quotes Rabbi Eliezer as saying, “Just as a house has doors, so also a woman has doors.” Others say: “Just as a house has keys [_miphteakh_, literally ‘opener’], so the woman has a key; for it is said (Gen. 30 : 22) ‘God hearkened to her, and opened [a play upon _patakh_, ‘to open,’ and _miphteakh_, ‘key’] her womb.’” The famous Rabbi Akibah says: “Just as a house has hinges, so there are hinges to a wife; for it is written (1 Sam. 4 : 19), ‘She kneeled and gave birth, for her hinges had turned’ [translating _ṣîrîm_ (or _tseereem_) as ‘hinges’ instead of ‘pains’; the word has the former meaning in Proverbs 26 : 14, ‘As the door turneth upon its hinges, so doth the sluggard upon his bed.’]” The Talmudic treatise Middâ (Mishna § 2, 5) explains the different parts of the womb under the metaphors _khĕdĕr_, “interior chamber;” _pʾrosdôr_, “vestibule;” _ʿalîyyâ_, “upper story.”[669] Professor Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr., in citing these metaphors, suggests that they coincide with the Arabic and Egyptian custom of using a key in the marriage rite, as described at page 244.