FORWARDED FROM JAMES NOHRNBERG
I hope I was right to assume Harry meant male the gender, and not "mayle"
or the woven, arrow-proof, tunic-style metal vestment, though of course
there is room to make such a connection. Exempla gratia, an ancient one
regarding mail and male-ness: "When he had finished speaking to Saul, the
soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as
his own soul ... and Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon
him and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and
girdle" (1 Sam 17:37ff) with "Then Saul clothed David with his armor; he
put a helmet of bronze on his head, and clothed him with a coat of mail ...
Then David said to Saul, 'I cannot go with these; for I am not used to
them.'" "Was knit to" = Heb. niqesheroh (from qashar, "bind"); "coat of
mail = Heb. qasqesth ("bind-bind"). The Hebrew of the 1st quote is more
literally like this: "then the spirit of Jonathan, she became knit with
the spirit of David, and Johnathan loved him as his spririt. ... and
Jonathan made a covenant with David because of loving him--him--as his
spirit [OR: "because of him loving him as his spirit"]." Inotherwords,
bind-bind = him-him: the spiritual bonding transcends Goliath's
double-knit, for Goliath, whom David defeats (despite the Philistine's
hardware or hard men's wear -- the idolatrous panoply of Philistine
religion) without wearing the armor, "had a helmet of bronze on his head,
and he as armed with a coat of mail and the weight of the coart was five
thousand shekels of bronze. And he had greaves upon his legs" (1 Sam.
17:5-6). One could say "His scales [Heb. aphiq magin, 'strong of shield']
are his pride," as Job 41:15 says of Leviathan: because his god Dagon's
hame means fish (Heb. dag), and the other meaning for the word "mail" is
fish-scales (Lev. 11:9-12, Deut. 14:9-10). David, with God as his shield
(2 Sam. 22:3) lands a very big fish, and beheads it; he also takes the
armor and puts it in his tent: "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his
own palace, his goods are in peace; but when one stronger than he assails
him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted, and
divides his spoil" (Luke 11:22). -- Jim Nohrnberg
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