3.4 Honor
In Tanakh, the place of honor is at the right: 1st Kings 2.19 “So Bathsheba went to King Solomon […] The king […] had a throne placed for the queen mother, and she sat on his right.” and Psalms 110:1 “A psalm of David. The Lord said to my lord: sit at My right hand while I make your enemies your footstool.”
We can find exact parallels in other semitic texts. In Babylon, carved on the stela of Hammurabi (around 1750 BCE), the God Zababa travels by the right side of the King: “May the god Zababa, the great warrior, the firstborn son of the Ekur temple, who travels at my right side, smash his weapon upon the field of battle.” And an Ugaritic text quoted by Pritchard (II AB5:108–10; Texts, 134) goes “”A throne is placed and he is seated to the right of Puissant Baʾal”.
A prominent moment in Tanakh is when Joseph takes his sons Ephraim and Menashe to be blessed by his father Jacob : Genesis 48:13-14, “And Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand towards Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Jacob’s right hand, and brought them near him. Then Jacob stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head, guiding his hands knowingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn.” Joseph tries to move his father’s hand – but Jacob tells him that Ephraim, the younger brother, is going to be the greater one, with his descendance a multitude of nations.
The right side of a sacrificial offering is more prestigious than the left: Leviticus 7:32 “And the right thigh from your sacrifices of well-being you shall present to the priest as a gift.” Interestingly, an Ugaritic letter (RS 261.247) quoted by C.H. Gordon in his Ugaritic Textbook (1965) includes the phrase “shaq yaman” , which must be the same thing exactly as shoq ha-yamin in Hebrew, “the right thigh.” You have to wonder if it also mentions a similar practice.
Born left-handed 