Sinews

A sinew, in the UPDV's vocabulary, is the tendon-and-ligament tissue layer between bone and skin. The word surfaces in only a handful of verses, but those verses range from a patriarchal etiology to the architecture of human formation, from a sufferer's nighttime body, to a prophet's metallic figure for stiff-necked obstinacy, to the bone-by-bone rebuild of a slain people.

The Hip-Sinew Israel Refuses to Eat

The earliest named sinew in the canon is the one Jacob's wrestler touched at the Jabbok. The verse closes the wrestling scene with a perpetual abstention practice: "Therefore the sons of Israel don't eat the sinew of the hip which is on the hollow of the thigh, to this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip" (Gen 32:32). The abstaining-subject is the sons of Israel, the abstained-item is the hip-sinew on the thigh-hollow, the duration-phrase extends the practice to this day, and the because-clause grounds the refusal in the wrestler's touch on Jacob's thigh-sinew. A sinew here is the etiologically-named, perpetually-refused hip-sinew of the patriarchal wrestle.

The Sinew in Human Formation

Job lays out his own creation as a layered build of skin, flesh, bones, and sinews: "You have clothed me with skin and flesh, And knit me together with bones and sinews" (Job 10:11). The clothing-language covers the outer two layers (skin and flesh), and the knitting-together verb takes bones-and-sinews as its paired-object — the deeper structural pair holding the body together underneath the skin-and-flesh covering. Sinew is exhibited here as the framework-tissue paired with bone in the divine knit of a human body.

The Sinew Layer in the Sufferer's Night

Job's later complaint returns to body-tissue language but locates the assault below the skin: "In the night season my bones are pierced in me, And the [pains] that gnaw me take no rest" (Job 30:17). The temporal-phrase fixes the assault-hour as the dark-hours, the bones-are-pierced clause names the deepest body-layer the pain reaches, the gnawing-pains intermediate-clause supplies the action between bone-core and skin-surface, and the take-no-rest predicate denies any pause through the night. The gnawed layer between the pierced bones and the outer skin is the sinew-and-tendon covering — the same intermediate body-tissue Job 10:11 names as the bone's knit-companion, now redirected from the framework-of-formation register onto a sufferer's gnawed sinew-layer assaulted through the night-hours.

The Iron Sinew of Obstinacy

Isaiah's prophet names a sinew in figural register: "Because I knew that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your brow bronze" (Isa 48:4). The neck-subject fastens the figure at the cervical-tendon, the iron-sinew predicate grades it as a metallic-rigid cable rather than a flexible-tissue, and the bronze-brow flanking-clause supplies the second metallic-anatomical figure of the same obstinacy verdict. A sinew here is the metallic-cabled neck-tendon the prophet uses as the figure for incurable stiff-necked disposition — strongest non-bending material the figure-bank can name, paired with a bronze brow.

Sinews in the Resurrection of the Bones

Ezekiel's valley-vision rebuilds slain bodies in a four-layer sequence, and the sinew is the first tissue Yahweh installs onto the bare bones: "And I will lay sinews on you⁺, and will bring up flesh on you⁺, and cover you⁺ with skin, and put breath in you⁺, and you⁺ will live; and you⁺ will know that I am Yahweh" (Eze 37:6). The opening And-I-will-lay-sinews-on-you⁺ predicate fastens the operative-act at the divinely-laid register where Yahweh is the active-installer, the sinews-object names the first body-layer, and the surrounding flesh / skin / breath / live / know-Yahweh chain grades the operative-sequence so the sinew-installation is the foundational sub-skin-and-flesh layer of the rebuild.

The vision then narrates the deposit as observed: "And I looked, and saw that there were sinews on them, and flesh came up, and skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them" (Eze 37:8). The sinews-on-them clause confirms the first-layer installation predicted at v6, the flesh-came-up and skin-covered-them-above clauses confirm the next two layers in order, and the but-there-was-no-breath-in-them closing clause sets up the second prophetic call (the breath-of-life summons in the verses that follow). A sinew is exhibited here as the first divinely-applied tissue laid onto the bare-bone framework of the valley-vision rebuild, with flesh and skin stacking visibly on top of it before the breath enters.