I really do love doing research. I’ve been doing a lot of it (on plagues, pandemics, and public health) as I work on this draft of the novel (if you’re remotely curious, I’ve been keeping a running bibliography on what I’m reading for the novel over here). Today, I came across a gem that I just have to share (and for the ethnically Jewish out there, it’ll probably explain quite a bit about our mothers’ constant fascination with our digestive health while we were growing up), a reference to a “plague” thrust upon the Philistines as punishment for stealing the Ark of God.

From the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 5: 6-12

6: But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.
9: And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts.
12: And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods: and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

After exercising the full extent of my google-fu, I came to learn that emerods can mean…hemorrhoids. Yes. Jehovah smote them with hemorrhoids.

There’s also a bunch of scholarly research that contends that emerods actually refers, in this instance, to bubonic swellings–which is, probably, more likely. But, hemorrhoid smiting paints a much, uh, richer picture, doesn’t it?