BREECHES (מִכְנְסֵי־בָ֔ד, drawers, or loincloth). Priests called to officiate at the high altar (see Altar) above the eyes of the watching multitude wore a cloth covering hips and thighs, made of fine linen like the rest of their garments. There is no reason to suppose that this covering had shaped trouser legs like a pair of shorts (Exod 28:42; 39:28; Lev 6:10; 16:4; Ezek 44:18). Sewn “breeches,” as distinct from this type of double loincloth, were the invention of riding nations, the Scythians and the Persians. The Romans later called the Gauls “trousered” (Galli bracati). The Geneva Bible, which had its origin in the Eng. Church in Geneva in the mid-16th cent. following Wycliffe’s Bible, tr. Genesis 3:7, “they sewed figleaves together, and made themselves breeches.” Hence the nickname for this VS, “the Breeches Bible.” The rendering is perhaps no more quaint than Moffatt’s “girdles.” It was obviously a loincloth, as the priest’s undergarment itself seems to have been.