FEMALE PRIDE AND LUXURY
Isaiah 3:16, Isaiah 4:1. Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, &c.
We have here a terrible denunciation of female pride and luxury. Consider—
I. ITS COMMONNESS. In almost every age and country there have been women such as are here described.
II. ITS CAUSES. There must be powerful causes to produce such a wide-spread effect. Like all things that are wrong, these evil things—the pride and luxury of so many women—are due to perversions of things that are right,—mainly, to certain things which are among the differentia of the female sex, such as—
1. A keener love of beauty than is common among men. The love of many women for soft textures and bright colours is as innocent, and free from all trace of personal vanity, as is the love of children for flowers.
2. A stronger yearning for admiration than is common among men. There are vain men, always on the outlook for indications of admiration, and they are simply contemptible. But it is an instinct of the true woman-nature to desire to be loved, and to value highly all things that tend to win love.
3. A recognition of the gifts of personal beauty. As a rule, women have more to be proud of in this respect than have men. If a woman is fair, she is simply a hypocrite if she pretends not to know it. Then there come in,
4. Rivalry, which in itself is a right thing, but becomes a harmful thing when women set themselves to out-dress each other.
5. Timidity, one of the graces of the female character, but that often leads to great evils. Few men have the courage to be singular, and fewer women sufficient self-reliance not to follow the fashion. But the pride and luxury of women is largely due also to the folly of men:—
(1.) Most men esteem and reward clothes more than character. Men are taken by such things as are mentioned in our text, and the fisher is not much to be blamed for adapting the bait to the taste of the fish.
(2.) Even of those men who condemn female luxury in the abstract, few have the courage to banish it from their own homes.
(3.) The lips of many men are sealed on this question by their own vices. They have their indulgences, and one of the prices which they pay for peace in their pursuit is silence as to this indulgence on the part of their wives and daughters. There is an unexpressed but wicked compromise on this matter.
III. ITS CONSEQUENCES.
1. The intellectual degradation of woman, the concentration of nearly all her thoughts on the question of dress.
2. The moral debasement of many women. For the means of gratifying their craving for luxury and display, how many have sold their virtue!
3. The destruction of that female influence which should always be exerted, and when exerted, is so powerful in aid of moral nobility. Sensual grossness in men is at once a cause and consequence of licentious vanity in women.
4. Commercial frauds, to which men resort to provide the means for the maintenance of the luxury of their homes.
Men and women are thus partakers in this sin, and as such, in the days of visitation, they shall suffer together (Isaiah 3:17; Isaiah 3:25; Isaiah 4:1) [568]
[568] Isaiah 4:1. The Jewess, like the ancient Roman, or modern Englishwoman, was called by her husband’s name; and she prized the honour of wedlock, and dreaded the reproach of childlessness, at least as much as either of these; but we most contrast the dignified expression of these feelings by Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth, nay, even that of the jealous and petulant Rachel, with the exhibition which the prophet now contemplates in his mind’s eye, in order to see the picture of social disorganisation which he sees. If a harem of wives and concubines was still a part of the king’s state in Isaiah’s time, though we have no proof of this, it is quite improbable that polygamy was the common custom of the nation, or that they had not long passed out of the half-civilised condition and habits for which Moses had provided in his laws for the protection of the female slaves whom a man might take at the same time for his wives; but now Isaiah says that these women, whose luxury and pride he has just described, will abandon even the natural reserve of their sex, and not only force themselves several upon one man, but declare that they will be content to share with each other a legalised concubinage in which they will not claim the concubine’s ancient right of bread and apparel, which the old law (Exodus 21:10) had in express terms secured to her, if only they may bear his name. It need not be supposed that Isaiah anticipated the literal fulfilment of his words; we shall probably understand him better by taking this as an instance of that poetic or rhetorical hyperbole, which he so delights to use for the more forcible expression of his moral and political teaching. The mystery which some commentators have seen in the numbers “seven” and “one” in this passage, and which is even said to have occasioned the separation of this portion of the prophecy into a distinct chapter, perhaps makes worth while the obvious remark that it is nothing more than the wide-spread idiom of modern as well as ancient languages, by which a definite or round number is put for an indefinite. Seven is thus generally used by the Hebrews for any considerable number, as it was among the Egyptians and Persians, and is still said to be in the East. The Moguls are said to employ nine in like manner. So, in English, we put five or ten for any small, and a hundred for a large number, in conversation; though the genius of our language forbids such idioms in graver discourse.—Strachey, pp. 55, 56.
THE DESOLATING AND DISORGANISING POWER OF WAR
Isaiah 4:1. And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will at our own bread and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by thy name to take away our reproach [571]
[571] See note to preceding outline.
This verse gives us a vivid picture of the desolating and disorganising power of war. The 25th and 26th verses of the previous chapter say “Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she being desolate shall sit on the ground.” This righteous chastisement has come. So often have the men been called into the field, so exterminating has been the carnage, as that now few men remain. The natural proportion of the sexes is disturbed. This disorganisation invades woman’s nature. Her natural modesty departs. With violent importunity seven women press marriage on one man. They will be no expense to him; they will earn their own food and raiment, if he will only give them his name in marriage. The writer of this outline has recently travelled in a land [Mexico] whose revolutions during the last fifty years have been so frequent as that he found parts of the country where the prophet’s words are true to-day. The men have been killed in battle. In some districts there are seven women to one man.
I. The tendency of sin is to produce war and to degrade women. The apostle James has described the genesis of war (Isaiah 4:1). Nations are but the aggregate of individuals. If the lusts of selfishness, greed, malice, &c., nestle like vipers in the hearts of individual men, they will be manifest in the nation.
1. Sin deteriorates man’s intellectual faculties. In its present unpurified condition, the human intellect is not inventive enough to discover those commercial relationships which will eventually bind in bonds of amity the nations of the world together.
2. Sin intensifies human selfishness. One of the most desolating wars of modern times originated in that gross selfishness which was too blind to see that it was a sin to hold property in man.
3. Sin intensifies human greed. “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark,” is a despised threat. Again and again has war originated in greed of territory and lust of plunder.
4. Sin intensifies human ambition. In the heart of all great conquerors, from Nimrod to Napoleon, has lain the lust of unholy ambition. Their motto has ever been “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”
5. Side by side with these lusts of selfishness, greed, ambition, &c, there has been a lack of justice and mercy. No mind having these latter sentiments healthily developed could “cry havock and let slip the dogs of war.” When the leaders of nations learn “to do justly and love mercy,” wars will be less common.
6. With war have come numerous evils to woman. The text describes some of them. Others come to the surface every day. Her husband has been forced from her side, or her sons have died on the battlefield; very bitter have been woman’s sorrows,—“Yea, a sword hath pierced through her own soul also.” And always where soldiers are multiplied in a land, and taken away from useful employment, women have been polluted and degraded. War and womanly degradation are inseparable evils.
II. It is the tendency of Christianity to produce peace and elevate woman.
1. To produce peace in its loftiest and widest sense Christ came into the world. The prophet Isaiah predicted Him as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). At His birth angels sang, “Peace on earth, good-will to man” (Luke 2:14).
2. By His atoning work He has laid the foundation of peace between man and God, and consequently between man and man.
3. The direct influence of Christ’s religion is to restrain and destroy those evil propensities out of which wars originate—lust of greed, ambition, malice, &c. What is in the individual comes out in the community. As individuals and nations become truly Christian and form the majority, wars will cease.
4. Prophecy speaks of a time coming when the principles of Christianity shall be in the ascendant, and then men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, &c., &c. (chap. Isaiah 2:4).
5. As the gospel of peace advances in a land woman’s condition is always elevated. The Christian man honours woman as no other man does. As he grows into the stature of Christ, woman’s lot is always happier. Compare woman’s status in pagan, Mohammedan, and barbarous lands, with her status in Christendom.
III. Hence while the Gospel claims as its advocate every Christian man, it has special claims on the service of every pious woman.—Every good man is called upon to spread the blessings of Christianity as widely as possible. But there are some evils whose removal appeals specially to pious women. Every good woman should throw her influence into the aggregate of the peace spirit, as against that war spirit which in certain stages of civilisation seems so natural to man. All women should join together to make up an army of peace promoters, outnumbering the men of the sword. To relieve their sisters from sorrow and save them from degradation, should be the aim of all good women.—William Parkes.