Ten years ago, I was reading through the whole Bible in roughly chronological order. I used a range of translations, but went back to the KJV for quite a bit of the narrative Old Testament, and I found an amazing word in a couple of passages. ‘Pisseth’, always in the context of the phrase ‘he that pisseth against the wall’. It’s in 1 Samuel chapter 25, 1 Kings chapter 14, 16, and 21, and 2 Kings chapter 9. I normally single out ‘1 Kings 21: 21’, because its repeated number makes it easy to look up.

This is remarkable for a number of reasons, firstly, it’s fine to use the word ‘pisseth’ when talking to a vicar. The King James version does also use the vanilla word ‘piss’, but only as a noun.

Secondly, in a way which is disappointing, unsurprising, but perhaps a little censorious, almost all modern translations get rid of the word. ‘He that pisseth against the wall’ is rendered ‘every last male’, ‘every one of your male descendants’, ‘every man-child’, and in most cases, ‘every male’. Even the New King James cuts it out. Most ‘literal’ translations keep ‘pisseth’ or go with ‘sits on the wall’, which I think is a bowdlerisation. Catholic Bibles tend to keep it, as they go from the Latin Vulgate, which uses ‘mingentem’, singular form of ‘mingens’, the past participle of the wonderful word ‘mingo’, urinate.

I did wonder if this was down to the Vulgate translation being from a different source to the more ancient Septuagint - a Greek version of the Old Testament with stronger roots and accuracy, but the Septuagint Greek is ‘οὐροῦντα’, (ouroúnta) make water’, and the Hebrew is ‘shaw-them’, again, make water’. ‘Shaw-them’ is what Ben-Them would be called it was primarily about micturation.

I say all that just to satisfy my own concern that this excellent phrase is not just a mistranslation, an assumption echoed through the ages or something quite rightly tossed out with the baby water. He sure did piss.

Most commentaries seem to say that the phrase ‘he that pisseth against the wall’ was used specifically to mean men, which raises two questions:

1. Why not just say ‘men’? and

1. If it just means ‘men’, does it matter that most modern translations deliberately skip the phrase and say ‘men’ instead?

I’ll answer the second one first. Does it matter that a really weird phrase is skipped if no important knowledge is missed? No and yes. The phrase is probably more alarming now than it was in 1611, when ‘piss’ was not an offensive word, and the phrase is one probably familiar to ancient Hebrews in a way that it isn’t nowadays. It might as well be an old mem e, and translating it literally would cause more confusion than help. There are two types of Bible translations - or of anything translations - literal ones, which can be baffling when you reach a once-familiar metaphor that is as meaningless to modern ears as Victorian in-jokes are to us. I read a book of annotated Gilbert and Sullivan script which made me realise the sheer density of references I had no way of getting. If I had the terrible task of translating Iolanthe into modern Welsh, I would probably play fast and loose - or at least allegro and elastic - with once-topical satire which baffles anyone but a time-traveller. ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle’ remains in its original state, largely because children around the world are still taught how to thread needles, and camels haven’t got extinct. If your translation’s option is to confuse a congregation with a piss-based phrase (and throw in a footnote that will rarely be read), or to rephrase it as ‘men’, if that is the only important part of the original, you could go either way, but I can see why people go with the latter.

The first question, why not just say ‘men’? Well, ‘he that pisseth against the wall’, it might be something that goes beyond just a tick in the box of gender. It has a pronoun right there - at least in the English version - and an action that implies a penis - though they’re by no means necessary. There’s a great camping contraption called a she-we that can open up options for anyone who can’t currently point percy at the porcelain. Maybe age is implied - that it’s adults, or anyone who’s transcended potty-training. For me, it also raises the question, did they have no toilets? They certainly had for number 2, as elsewhere the Bible warns against digging those pits anywhere too close to the pathway. Were walls the default male urinal, and were parts of ancient Jerusalem smelly by nature. Parts of ancient everywhere were smelly by nature - something a time-traveller would soon learn, but I like to think they didn’t go willy-nilly.

One of the best episodes of Star Trek TNG has Captain Picard stranded on a planet with an alien whose language he cannot translate - because the alien isn’t using foreign words in a different language - it has a language based entirely on memes and references. It keeps saying ‘Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra’, and it turns out to be citing a historical event as an allegory. Take this dagger, and we’ll defend ourselves like Darmok and Jalad did. ‘Shaka, when the walls fell’ to suggest a failure. Is it possible some guy who went for a wet on the wall cemented himself as the cultural allegory for men, or a certain kind of man? Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra reminds me of our way of calling people a Philistine or a Good Samaritan - Biblical references which assume knowledge of relevant passages. The ancient Jews didn’t have numbers for the psalms, so they wouldn’t say ‘Psalm 22’, they’d just say its first line as a title, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me’ — Jesus may have been referencing the whole psalm with its hopeful ending, rather than just quoting its first line.

One final piece of piss to consider. All the scriptural references to ‘he that pisseth against the wall’ come in a specific context. It’s about wiping out David’s enemies - a prophecy from God that the family of Nabal would be wiped out, that the whole house of Ahab shall perish, that the whole house of Baasha would perish, that he will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, and take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam as a man taketh away dung till it be all gone.

This isn’t a casual way to refer to your mates and muckers. This is a term for men doomed to die. They may not know it. Today they may be having a wet on the wall, so casually are they going about life, but they’ll all be wiped out. It has something alarming, something political about it, bringing it up every time someone is marked for destruction. It’s disquieting. True, Nabal, Ahab, Baasha and Jeroboam had all done measurably terrible things against king David, against God and against the people, but there’s something uncomfortable about seeing the verses together bringing a fate to people, branded together in something as relatable as pompless weeing. I mean, weeing without ceremony.

‘He that pisseth’ is undeniably Biblical, but perhaps I’m wrong in encouraging you to use ‘pisseth’, during casual chat with the vicar - unless you’re speaking of curses prophecied against God’s enemies — but honestly I’d really hold off that unless you’re a prophet full of the holy spirit. We’re not the bosses of who’s God’s enemies, and going around cursing and speaking of doom is not our job, and makes us seem lacking in human understanding. As we’re told, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. It’s God’s job to bring action against them, not ours, and God’s job to say ‘pisseth’, among many far more edifying things.