Verse 1
1. The first verse completes the picture of domestic desolation on account of the scarcity of male inhabitants, destroyed by war or carried to Babylon as captives.
In that day That calamitous period described as yet to come to Jerusalem.
Seven women An indefinite, but a large, full number. Native modesty is laid aside; all sue to become wives to one man, on account of the great reproach of unwedded life among Jewish women. For this, they will even surrender their rights of dowry and support.
The primeval institution of marriage (Genesis 2:24) permitted the union only of one man and one woman. But, long before the times of Moses, morals on this subject suffered degradation. Unlimited polygamy became, in the East, the rule, not the exception; nay, worse than this, prostitution of females and boys became a religious institution.* See Whedon’s note on Revelation 2:14-15. The disgraceful evil of prostitution Moses required to be punished and rooted out by the severest laws. Polygamy he suffered, because compelled by social necessity; but he aimed so to regulate it that in the end it would virtually cease to exist a fact near to realization till monarchy reopened the floodgates of the evil. Wars so diminished the number of males, and the reproach of childlessness among females was so great, that in the text above, though the situation was evil, the sentiment in the urgent request of the women was in their own estimation virtuous. “The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.”
[* See “Phoenica and Israel,” published by Phillips & Hunt: an important work in Old Testament exegesis bearing on this subject.]
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