Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

But, perhaps, we ought not to think it so very strange that men who dishonor God, and who want Him blotted out of their thoughts, should abuse God’s best gift to man. This much we know, that God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” When the Pharisees, in their malignity, framed the question, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?”—a problem beset with many difficulties, our Lord very promptly asked a counter question, “What did Moses command you?” Instead of entering into their vexed question, He appeals at once to the law and the testimony, and requires them to recite the provision made by Moses for such cases; not as settling the difficulties, but as presenting the true status quaestionis, which was not what the Scribes taught or the Pharisees practiced, but what Moses meant and God permitted. They said, “Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.” Quickly Jesus replied, “For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.” The substance of our Saviour’s answer was, Moses gave you no positive command in the case; he would not make a law directly opposite to the law of God; but Moses saw the wantonness and wickedness of your hearts, that you would turn away your wives without any just and warrantable cause; and to restrain your extravagancies of cruelty to your wives, or disorderly turning of them off upon any occasion, he made a law that none should put away his wife but upon a legal cognizance of the cause and giving her a bill of divorce. “From the beginning,” that is, in the very act of creation, God embodied the idea of equality. Capricious divorce is a violation of natural law.

What a beautiful picture Solomon gives us of womanhood. “Her price,” he says, “is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.” After the grace of God in the soul, a good wife, one planned on the Divine model, is the Lord’s best gift. To the husband who has such a woman to stand at the head of his home, nothing can measure her value. His heart rests safely in her integrity. He has no need to add to his wealth by spoils, for she will do him good and not evil all the days of his life. She is industrious. She not only works into comfort the wool and flax that are at hand; she seeks to add to her store from the outside world. She does not ask to be kept in idleness. She worketh willingly with her hands. Not content to be a consumer, she becomes a producer. Not satisfied with home production, she brings suitable comforts and luxuries from afar into her home. She is careful in the use of her time. She is not feebly self-indulgent. She riseth while it is yet night to look after her domestic affairs. She is a business woman, knowing the laws that underlie the rise and fall of real estate. She considereth a field, and buyeth it. Then with her hands she planteth a vineyard.

She does not produce inferior goods, neither is she cheated in a bargain. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. She loves to share her husband’s business burdens, that he may share her society; and they twain are one in service and one in recreation. Like our Lord, she delights not to be ministered unto, but to minister. She is benevolent. Being a recognized producer, she has the luxury of giving of her own means to the poor. She provides well for her household, keeping her dependents in comfort, and even in luxury. As the Revised Version puts it, “She maketh herself carpets of tapestry.” Her own clothing is of the best.

The husband of such a wife has the gentle manners that belong with such a home, and he can but succeed in life. He is known and honored among the best in the land. As her business grows, her products become finer and more expensive; and as she puts them upon the market, her profits increase. This woman is clothed with strength and honor. She has no anxiety about the future. She knows that though her beauty may fade, and her social charms become a thing of the past, her strength and honor will become richer and more glorious as the years go by. “In her tongue is the law of kindness.” She is too busy with her own affairs to look after those of her neighbors. In heathen countries it is a great disgrace for a woman’s voice to be heard in the presence of men. Where women are held back from the real interests that concern them and for which they have so often proved themselves fully qualified, what else could take up their active minds but the pettiness of gossip?

Such are the beautiful tributes paid to women by Solomon, the wisest of men. Nor are the prophets behind in acknowledging the worth and quality of women. Eight hundred years before the Christian era, the prophet Joel wrote, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” In the Christian dispensation, the daughters as well as the sons were to be filled with the Spirit of God, and the Spirit would use their lips in the declaration of His truth as certainly as the lips of men, and Paul defined prophecy to be speaking “unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” It has been one of the devices of the evil one to padlock the lips of that half of the race who are most loyal to God and who have the most helpful knowledge of human nature.

Aside from all these high social and spiritual relations of the Hebrew women, they had a legal status. The rights of the Jewish wife were carefully guarded. Her husband was not allowed to go to war for a year after they were married; and though the eastern institution of polygamy was not utterly prohibited, yet it was so restricted that it must not in any way invade the rights and privileges of the wife. If a husband became jealous of his wife’s fidelity, the legal presumptions were all in her favor. The husband was not allowed to inflict summary punishment; but she was subjected to an ordeal which could by no possibility work injury to her, unless through the guilt of her own conscience or the interposition of divine Providence.

As a mother, the Jewish woman must be honored by her children. As a daughter, she had rights and an inheritance. If the wife or daughter uttered rash and foolish vows, the husband or father had a right to disannul them, provided he did it from the day it came to his knowledge. Even the Gentile woman taken captive by a young Israelite warrior must have been surprised to receive treatment so strangely different from that received by captives in her own country, or even among modern nations who profess to be civilized. Her captor could not offer her an insult; she must be taken, not to a prison, but to his home, where she must neither be abused nor outraged, but treated with patient consideration; and she could not be taken, even as a wife, until a full month had elapsed, during which he might secure her affections or reconsider his determination. And if after her marriage she was discontented and made herself disagreeable, she could never again be held as a servant, but must be allowed to go free. Widows, who in heathen lands have been degraded and sometimes murdered or burned, were to be treated with the utmost tenderness. They shared in the tithes, and were admitted to the public festivities. They had a right to glean in the fields and gather up the forgotten sheaves, to gather which the owner was not allowed to go back. Injustice against widows was treated with fearful punishment. “Thou shalt not take the widow’s raiment to pledge” (Deut. xxiv, 17), was a benevolent law which can not be paralleled in any modern code. The command to lend to an Israelite in his poverty was imperative, but no pledge of raiment could be exacted from a widow.

Thus in a variety of ways was the Lord pleased to manifest his kindness and compassion for the fatherless and the widow, and in consequence womanhood was honored and honorable in the Jewish nation, beyond anything known in the heathen world. From the vile and degrading orgies of heathenism the women of Israel were exempt. They feared the Lord, and at his hand received blessings and mercies without number.

Thus it is seen that Hebrew women had rare privileges. They tower like desert palms above the women in pagan lands. In her home she is honored and respected. In India a woman eats her first and last meal with her husband on her wedding day. In the Hebrew home her children are like “olive plants” round her table. In China they may kill their little daughters by the thousands. She has legal rights in her Hebrew home. In all Mohammedan lands a man has the same power over the life of his wife that he has over the life of his horse.

What makes this difference? We answer, It is God’s thought of womanhood, for there was nothing in the Hebrew men to bring about such thoughtful consideration. There were periods in the history of the Hebrew nation when they departed from God, and sank into the vices of the heathens around them. It was during these periods that womanhood was degraded to that of their pagan sisters. There were times when the Hebrews had taken on heathen manners to such an extent as to regard it a disgrace for a rabbi to recognize his wife if he met her on the street. It was commonly said that he was a fool who attempted the religious instruction of a woman, and the words of the law had better be burned than given to a woman.