A CONSECRATED WOMAN — from qadosh, 'holy,' the same root as sanctuary and saint. Traditionally understood as a cult or shrine prostitute attached to a temple, though the evidence outside the Bible is thinner and more disputed than confident commentaries admit, and some scholars doubt the institution existed in the form usually described. What is beyond dispute is the social register in Genesis 38: the narrator calls the veiled woman a zonah, a common prostitute (38:15), but when Hirah has to ask the locals for directions on his friend's behalf he says qedeshah (38:21) — the dignified term. The shelf splits four ways: KJV flattens both to 'harlot'; NIV 'shrine prostitute' and NWT 'temple prostitute' commit to the cultic reading; ASV keeps a distinction and flags the Hebrew in the margin. This translation renders 'consecrated woman' — near what the word says, without settling an institution the evidence won't settle. ⭐ Deuteronomy 23:18 (already on these pages) is the law, and it names the MASCULINE too: there shall be no qedeshah among the daughters of Israel, and no qadesh among the sons of Israel. Read out from consonants that also spell a place-name, the feminine stands in four verses of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 38:21-22, Deuteronomy 23:18, Hosea 4:14); the masculine in six, and in the histories it is something in the land under Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:24) that three reforming kings then removed — Asa, Jehoshaphat, Josiah (1 Kings 15:12, 22:47; 2 Kings 23:7); Job 36:14 is the sixth (none yet on these pages). ⚠ The KJV rendered the masculine 'sodomite', and the ASV kept it; the Reina-Valera printed «sodomítico» in 1909 and «sodomita» in 1960. The Hebrew word is about the shrine a man served, not about whom he served it with, and the rendering imported Genesis 19 into a verse that never mentions it — a documented misuse of the text, and a misreading. → first discussed at Gen 38:21