Kidney
The kidney sits in scripture at two registers at once. In the sacrificial law it is a literal organ, named alongside the fat and the caul of the liver among the inward parts that are burned on the altar as Yahweh's portion of the offering. In the Psalter and the wisdom and prophetic books the same organ — the older English "reins," the Hebrew word for the paired loin-tier kidneys — names the deepest interior of a person, the inward seat of feeling, conscience, and will, the place where Yahweh tries and inspects and from which the psalmist's grief and joy issue. UPDV renders the figurative register variously as "minds," "mind," or "inward parts," so the literal kidney-noun and the figurative inward-organ-noun no longer share an English surface, but the underlying organ-figure is one.
The Two Kidneys on the Altar
The sacrificial code makes the kidney a fixed item on the burnt-portion list. At the consecration of Aaron and his sons, Moses is told to take the bull's interior fat together with the paired organs: "And you will take all the fat that covers the insides, and the caul on the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, and burn them on the altar" (Ex 29:13). The same items reappear when the consecration ram is offered: "Also you will take of the ram the fat, and the fat tail, and the fat that covers the insides, and the caul of the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, and the right thigh (for it is a ram of consecration)" (Ex 29:22).
The Levitical legislation then formalizes the kidneys as a standing part of the peace-offering. For a beast from the herd: "the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, which is by the loins, and the caul on the liver, with the kidneys, he will take away" (Lev 3:4). The clause is repeated verbatim for the lamb (Lev 3:10) and again for the goat (Lev 3:15), so the kidney-portion is fastened across all three animal-classes the peace-offering admits. The same wording carries into the sin-offering: "and the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, which is by the loins, and the caul on the liver, with the kidneys, he will take away" (Lev 4:9), with the priest then burning them "on the altar of burnt-offering" (Lev 4:10). And it carries into the trespass-offering: "and the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, which is by the loins, and the caul on the liver, with the kidneys, he will take away; and the priest will burn them on the altar for an offering made by fire to Yahweh: it is a trespass-offering" (Lev 7:4-5).
The narrative of the inaugural sacrifices at the tent of meeting confirms that the priesthood actually performs what the legislation prescribes. At Aaron's consecration: "And he took all the fat that was on the insides, and the caul of the liver, and the two kidneys, and their fat; and Moses burned it on the altar" (Lev 8:16). At the first day of Aaron's officiating ministry, the same procedure is rehearsed in shorter form: "but the fat, and the kidneys, and the caul from the liver of the sin-offering, he burned on the altar; as Yahweh commanded Moses" (Lev 9:10). Across this sacrificial register the kidney is consistently disposed by burning, not by eating and not as a priestly portion — assigned to Yahweh on the altar. The recurring phrase "which is by the loins" fixes the organ at the body's deep-interior loin-tier where the sacrificial law and the later figurative usage will both locate the same organ.
The Loin-Tier as Inward Seat
When the kidney crosses from the altar to the human interior it is rendered in UPDV not as "kidneys" but as the loins, the inward parts, the mind, or the heart-and-mind pair. Isaiah's portrait of the messianic figure fastens the operative virtues at the loin-tier in a wrap of doubled belt: "And righteousness will be the loincloth of his waist, and faithfulness the loincloth of his loins" (Isa 11:5). The waist-righteousness and loins-faithfulness pair plants the messianic figure's named virtues precisely at the kidney-and-loin region, the same body-tier the sacrificial code names as the kidneys' location.
The sage of Proverbs names the same inward register as the parental joy-seat. After "if your heart be wise, My heart will be glad, even mine," the sage doubles the parental interior at the next verse: "Yes, my heart will rejoice, When your lips speak right things" (Prov 23:16). The traditional "my reins shall rejoice" is brought forward in UPDV as "my heart will rejoice," the parent's deepest interior keyed to the son's tested speech.
What Yahweh Tries
The Psalter's most concentrated kidney-figure is the trying-language. The interior-organ pair is exhibited as the ground on which Yahweh assays a person, and the verdict falls on what Yahweh finds there rather than on outward action. "Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but you establish the righteous: For, the righteous God tries the minds and hearts" (Ps 7:9). The minds-and-hearts pair (the older heart-and-reins pair) is named as the standing trying-object of the righteous God whose judgment is in view across the chapter. David's Ps 26 inward-assay petition lodges the same petition from the human side: "Examine me, O Yahweh, and prove me; Try my heart and my mind" (Ps 26:2). The closing imperative invites Yahweh to carry the trying-inspection into the very heart-and-mind paired interior the Ps 7:9 predication names as the standing trying-object.
The same paired interior is named as the conviction-site under Yahweh's hand. In Asaph's post-sanctuary retrospective on his pre-sanctuary envy, the heart-grieved opening is doubled at the inward-parts piercing: "For my heart was grieved, And I was pricked in my inward parts" (Ps 73:21). The heart and the inward-parts (the traditional reins) are registered as joint conviction-witnesses, the second pierced through at the deep-interior seat where the first is grieved. And in Ps 139, the same inward-parts noun is exhibited at the formation-register: "For you formed my inward parts: You knit me together in my mother's womb" (Ps 139:13). The inmost organs the trying-Yahweh assays are the same inmost organs Yahweh formed; the assay-Yahweh and the formation-Yahweh are the one inspector of the one interior he himself made.
The Kidney-Idiom That UPDV Translates Out
One traditional kidney-reference does not surface in UPDV with the kidney-noun on its English face. Moses's song of Yahweh's nursing of Israel reads in UPDV: "Butter of the herd, and milk of the flock, With fat of lambs, And rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, With the finest of the wheat; And of the blood of the grape you drank wine" (Deut 32:14). The traditional "fat of kidneys of wheat" — a Hebrew idiom in which the kidney-noun figures the choicest, fattest grain — is rendered as "the finest of the wheat" so the kidney-image is replaced by the plain superlative the idiom carried. The verse is noted here as a marker that the kidney-noun stood at this place in older translations, while the UPDV reader meets the same content under the explicit "finest of the wheat" wording.