Bible Dictionaries
Ear

　　The finer shades of biblical statement are discerned only as we succeed in placing ourselves at the contemporary point of view. This is particularly the case with references to personality and its elements or manifestations, since primitive or ancient psychology differs so greatly from the psychology of the present time. For example, primitive psychology, in its ignorance of the nervous system, distributes psychical and ethical attributes to the various physical organs. There are tribes that give the cars of a dead enemy to their youths to be eaten, because they regard the physical ear as the seat of intelligence, which thus becomes an attribute of the consumer (J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough2, 1900, ii. 357f.). Though the Bible contains nothing so crude as this, yet the same idea of localized psychical function underlies its references to the ear. The high priest’s ear is consecrated by the application of ram’s blood, that he may the better hear God (Leviticus 8:23); the slave’s ear, on his renunciation of liberty, is pierced by his master, as a guarantee of his permanent obedience (Exodus 21:6, Deuteronomy 15:17). Such practices help to give the true line of approach to many biblical references to the ear, the full force of which might otherwise be missed. The ‘peripheral consciousness’ of the ear (cf. 1 Samuel 3:11, Job 12:11, Ecclesiastes 1:8, etc.) must be remembered in regard to phrases which have become to us simply conventional, such as the repeated refrain of the Apocalypse, ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear’ (Revelation 2:7, etc.; οὖς). This attribution of quality to the organ does not, of course, imply naturalistic determinism; the ear is part of the responsible personality. If men ‘having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts,’ it is because ‘they will turn away their ears from the truth’ (2 Timothy 4:3 f.; [Note: E Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.).]