Judges 11:37

37. Bewail my virginity Mark, not to bewail her death, for that, by itself considered, might be regarded as a glorious end. Die she must, sooner or later, and no more honourable death could ever be her lot. But she would bewail that which gave her death its only woful pang, and was to her far worse than death itself; a thing above all others deplorable in the estimation of that age and race the fact that, in the flower of youthful womanhood, she must close life without a husband and without a child, leaving no heir to her father’s house. It is difficult for us, with our loose attachments to the coming ages, and familiar with the modern prevalent lack of interest in posterity, and the noticeable desire among multitudes of females to remain childless, to appreciate the depth of feeling on this subject among the Hebrew women. A husbandless and childless state was a reproach to any marriageable female. Keil makes a misleading assertion when he says, “To mourn one’s virginity does not mean to mourn because one has to die a virgin, but because one has to live and remain a virgin.” More truly should it be said, that the expression has as much respect to the past as to the future, but contemplates not specially life or death, but the fact of virginity. Could Jephthah’s daughter only have perpetuated her father’s house and name; could it only have been that sons and daughters survived her, to take away her reproach among women, there would have been no pang in her death.

But why, some ask, if she was doomed to death, did she not rather spend those two months at home, and enjoy all the comfort she could during the short respite of her life? To one thus appointed to death, we answer, home affords no soul comforts, and earth’s festal scenes and sociality no pleasure. It is not human, under such circumstances, to find entertainment in the common joys of home. Far more congenial to the feelings of the dying maiden would be the mountain solitudes than any thing her father’s house could furnish. Then, also, the two months were asked, not for one more round of pleasures, but for mourning her virginity; and for that purpose the solitudes of the mountains, not the peopled town, with the presence of men, were appropriate.

But if, on the other hand, she knew she was to live and remain a virgin, and be shut up in seclusion for the rest of life, what sense or object in taking those two months to mourn? And in what sense would she be more really consecrated to celibacy after than during the two months of sorrow? Much more natural, as we conceive, would it have been for her, in that case, to have said: Let me stay at home, and enjoy the scenes of common life yet a month or two, since I must give all after-life to tears and solitude.