Dear viewer, we all must gird up our loins! Everyone knows that’s solid advice. Your loins? Gird them up - and remember the Even the president of the united states puts on his trousers one day at a time.

To gird with a girdle, to be girt, it’s a term that comes up a good twenty times in old translations - I’m thinking mainly of the KJV, the world-famous Bible translation from 1611. But what does it mean? I tend to use it to mean ‘quick, some trousers on!’ or perhaps ‘quick, armour-plate your aforementioned trousers, cos the British are coming!’. It’s a Biblical phrase that runs through my head a great deal.

I had the same with ‘or you shall surely die’. For several years I used it to add punch to advice and warnings. ‘Go down the loft steps backwards, like a ladder, or you will surely die’ or ‘you should file your taxes sooner rather than later, or you will surely die’. I got stuck on the origin of the phrase, thinking it might be from Doctor Who or Lord of the Rings, but it turns out it’s God in the Garden of Eden. A serious warning to keep off one of the fruits. He was right, of course, though it turned out the dying was a long-term curse rather than an immediate zap. Still good advice

What is girding our loins? Quite a few times, people in the Old Testament are said to gird themselves with a girdle, which I take to be a belt. Very apocryphal, but Shakespeare tells us Puck could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. In my mind I ram ‘gird’ together with encompass, like how ‘strong bulls of Bashan shall compass me about’ in Psalm 22 or possibly 23. To ‘compass me about’ is a familiar Old Testament phrase, too. So is ‘gird your loins’ belting up, strapping in, and getting ready for a rip-roaring rampage of revenge? Is ‘they girded on their swordo ’ strapping and scabbarding?

All three major prophets talk about girding yourself with sackcloth, which goes beyond just a belt. It turns up in the New Testament as well. Late in John, Jesus tells Peter: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry [thee] whither thou wouldest not.

It’s a forewarning that Peter will live to infirmity or to old age, or to an execution outside his own control. Others will gird you. Girding here is somewhere beyond ‘dressing you’, into loss of control of what or when is worn. Wresting control of your life, practically leashing. Girding as self-directed action. And Peter uses it himself in his epistle and pairs it with sobriety! “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”

Gird up the loins of your mind’, is the Bible’s first and only use of it in metaphor. Other translations render that ‘be alert and think straight’ or ‘prepare for action’. The Message says ‘roll up your sleeves’, which is a good modern alternative makes me imagine someone with loins in a funny place. The Orthodox Jewish translation of the New Testament - which does indeed exist - suggests ‘tighten the readiness gartel of your mind’, which is interesting, as it uses ‘gartel’, etymologically linked to ‘girdle’, but used in Hasidic Judaism for a belt or sash used in prayer. Modest, in monochrome silk, as a significant boundary separating heart and genitals, to be worn by some, mainly Hasidic folks during any mentioning of God. Suddenly it’s not just a trouser-on metaphor, but something linked to prayer and purity.

If I was a proper theologian I’d go back to the Greek and the Hebrew, but I’m not. I just like the phrase. I often introduce people to my parents with the phrase ‘they begat me from their loins’. Loins is a wonderful word. It makes them sound like hearty pork chops. And whenever I hear ‘gird up your loins’ I still think, be ready, clad your legs in something practical, have your keys, phone and wallet, roll up your sleeves — or I think on bottom surgery, you can either do as Psalm 45 instructs and gird thy sword unto thy thigh, or do the` opposite and girl up your loins. Whatever works for you, dear listener