The Right Hand by Daniel Wilson — Read

Guided by my own personal experience, now extending over a good deal more than threescore and ten years, the Benjamites of Saul's host, who could hurl stones with equal facility by either hand, seem to me greatly more surprising and exceptional than the left-handed company of seven hundred, every one of whom could sling stones at a hair's-breadth and not miss. It is contrary to the nearly universal and almost inevitable preferential use of one hand. It naturally followed on such preference that this unvarying employment led not only to its receiving a distinctive appellation, but that the term so used came to be associated with ideas of dignity, honour, and trust; and as such is perpetuated in the languages both of civilised and savage races.

But this suggests another inquiry of important significance in the determination of the results. The application of the Latin _dexter_ to "right-handedness" specifically, as well as to general dexterity in its more comprehensive sense, points, like the record of the old Benjamites, to the habitual use of one hand in preference to the other; but does it necessarily imply that _their_ "right hand" was the one on that side which we now concur in calling dexter or right? In the exigencies of war or the chase, and still more in many of the daily requirements of civilised life, it is necessary that there should be no hesitation as to which hand shall be used. Promptness and dexterity depend on this, and no hesitation is felt. But, still further, in many cases of combined action it is needful that the hand so used shall be the same; and wherever such a conformity of practice is recognised the hand so used, whichever it be, is that on which _dexterity_ depends, and becomes practically the _right_ hand. The term _yamin_, "the right hand," already noted as the root of the proper name Benjamin, and of the tribe thus curiously distinguished for its left-handed warriors and skilled marksmen, is derived from the verb _yāmăn_, to be firm, to be faithful, as the right hand is given as a pledge of fidelity, _e.g._ "The Lord hath sworn by his right hand" (Isa. lxii. 8). So in the Arabic form, _bimin Allah_, by the right hand of Allah. So also with the Hebrews and other ancient nations, as still among ourselves, the seat at the right hand of the host, or of any dignitary, was the place of honour; as when Solomon "caused a seat to be set for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand" (1 Kings ii. 19). Again, the term is frequently used in opposition to _semol_, left hand; as when the children of Israel would pass through Edom; "We will go by the king's high way; we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left" (Num. xx. 17).