Latchet

Latchet (Hebrew serokh) was the thong or strap that fastened a sandal to the foot. Abraham's proverbial declaration that he would not take "so much as a thread or a sandal-thong" from the king of Sodom (Gen. 14:23) uses this word to denote something trivially small. John the Baptist employs the image in his disclaimer of unworthiness before Christ: "whose sandal-latchet I am not worthy to unloose" (John 1:27; Mark 1:7; Luke 3:16) — the task of removing sandals being assigned to the lowest household slave, making John's self-deprecation a striking affirmation of Christ's infinite superiority.