VIRGINITY — an abstract plural built on betulah, a virgin, and a word this project meets in exactly one place. The absolute form stands in three verses of the Hebrew Bible, all of them in Deuteronomy 22 (v14, v17, v20), with the construct betulei alongside it in the same passage. ⚠ The law never says what the physical evidence is. Verse 17 has the parents spread out a simlah, a cloak, before the elders and calls it 'the betulim of my daughter' — the abstract noun standing in for the object. Whether the cloth is the bedding of the wedding night or the evidence of a first menstruation has been argued for centuries and the text does not say. ⭐ And that is where to watch the shelf, because the Hebrew word is simlah, a CLOAK — the same word as 22:3 and 22:5 — and several versions settle the question inside the verse by printing bedding instead. The garment is kept by the ASV ('the garment'), the Geneva ('the vesture'), the NWT 1984 ('the mantle') and the RV60 («la vestidura»); the KJV, Douay and NIV neutralise it to 'the cloth'; and the RV 1909 and NVI print «la sábana», a bedsheet. ⚠ The TLB goes furthest of all and supplies what the Hebrew never says anywhere: 'the blood-stained sheet from her marriage bed'. ⚠ The shelf also mostly supplies a noun the Hebrew does not have: 'the tokens of virginity' (KJV, ASV), 'evidence of virginity' (NWT 1984), while the KJV at v14 flattens the whole phrase to 'I found her not a maid'. → first discussed at Deut 22:14