Seven Women and One Man

… us in the spiritual strength of God who is over all, we keep safe in ourselves the bright beauty of our own nature. But when he withdraws his help, we shall be utterly stripped of every good; having lost the beauty of the glories that come from virtue, we shall be subject to dishonorable passions (Romans 1:26) and shall be slaves to enemies.

“And seven women will take hold of one man, saying: We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothing; only let your name be called over us; take away our reproach” (Isaiah 4:1).

Having fully completed his account of the Jewish women who would go from luxury and wealth into captivity, he tries to show that the cities of Judea will be left empty of men, and will have a great scarcity of those who were once the finest fighters. For he had said, “All your strong men will fall by the sword” (Isaiah 3:25).

What, then, is the proof of what I have said? It is framed with great skill and elegance. The law given through Moses says to the sons of Israel, “There shall be no one childless or barren among you” (Deuteronomy 7:14). So among the Jews it was counted one of the worst reproaches for a woman not to bear children, or for any man to be childless; for at once the stigma of the childless and the barren was fastened on them.

The law was indeed spiritual (Romans 7:14). For the God of all was promising that the spiritual Israel, that is, the mind that sees God, would not be fruitless or made barren, but fruitful instead, like a good and choice land. But the Jews understood it in a fleshly way, for they were natural men, not having the Spirit (Jude 19).

So, he says, there will be such a scarcity of males in the land, once the war has consumed the race, that seven women, that is, many, will take hold of one man and say: “We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothing; only let your name be called over us; take away our reproach.” Do you see how they dread the reproach of childlessness, and how strongly they refuse the name of childless and barren? For they come not seeking the usual things, what wives are accustomed to receive from their husbands; they say they will provide for themselves in this, and ask only, as I said, that their reproach be taken away.

Note the depth of the passage. If the man they appealed to had been rich, the women would not have said, “We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothing.” But since they know that those who were saved from the war and barely escaped have fallen into utter poverty and great misery, they ask nothing at all of them, and seek only to become mothers of children.

That is the sense of the history. But they carry the passage before us over …