WIDOW (run5N, ro.). Though no special provision for widows is prescribed by the Mosaic law, that law regards them with a kindly aspect. They are to share in the religious feasts (Deut. xvi. r, 14); they are to have part with the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless in the tithes of the increase of the land each third year (Dent. xiv. 29; XXvi. 12) ; and if a sheaf is by oversight left in the field in harvest, it is to be for the widow and father less, as are the gleanings of the olive-tree and the vineyard (Dent. xxiv. 19-21) ; the widow's garment is not to be taken in pledge (Deut. xxiv. 17) ; and in general they were to be treated with equity and generosity as under the special protec tion of God (Gen. xxii. 22; Dent. XXVii. 19; comp. Ps. xciv. 6 ; Is. i. 17 ; Jer. vii. 6 ; Ezek. xxii. 7 ; Zech. vii. to ; Mal. iii. 5). With regard to the law for the remarriage of a widow by the brother of her deceased husband, see MARRIAGE.
In passing from the O. T. to the N. one is struck with the fact that the number of widows in connec tion with the apostolic churches seems to have been disproportionately large as compared with the pro bable number amon,g the Jews in forrner times, or with the average number in any community at any time. What makes this more remarkable is that the multiplicity of widows among the Christians was as sudden as the multiplication of disciples, and simultaneous with it (comp. Acts vi. /). On this subject we have been favoured with the follow ing remarks by a friend :— A sudden increase of ordinary poverty, along with a sudden increase of disciples, would be quite natural and explicable ; but that as soon as there was a multitude of disciples there should also be a multitude of widows, before the rise of deadly per secution or famine, and before death, in the ordi nary course of events, could diminish the disciples, seems strange indeed. Still stmnger and more significant is the fact that this widowhood was female only, and that it appears to have been a common and customary feature of the early churches. At Joppa, about four or five years after the day of Pentecost, the excellence of Dorca.s was evinced in the clothing of widows, who wepl as they showed her work to Feter, and to whom, with the saints, he presented her alive. This class of persons must have been numerous when Paul thought it necessary to couple them specifically with the unmarried in his instructions to the Corin thians respecting marriage. To this peculiarity of number and increase must be added the apostle's peculiar distinction between 'widows' and 'widows indeed,' and the relationship which he intimates between widows and a man or woman that believes (t Tim. v. passim). We are not aware that any
satisfactory attempt has ever been made to account for these peculiarities of early ecclesiastical widow hood. Our own attention was first drawn to it by the personal observation of facts in the mission field, which appeared to illustrate the whole sub ject,'and to suggest the true interpretation of Paul's language to Timothy concerning- widows, as well as to solve the vexed question of the continued polygamy of converted heathens.
'We believe that by widows indeed' the apostle means widows by the decease of their husbands— widows in the ordinary way common to all lands and ages ; and that, as distinguished from these, Ile intends by widows' (the widows of believers) to denote the repudiated wives of converted poly gamists. Such women were in a state of widow hood, and yet they were not widows indeed, be cause their late husbands were still alive. When a polygamist, either Jew or Gentile, became a Chris tian, and found that one wife' was the law of Christ's house, for the sake of a gorily seed' (Mal. ii. 15), he had to select one and put away the rest of his two or more wives. The multiplication of disciples, therefore, among Jewish or Gentile poly gamists, was the multiplication of widows; and the proper treatment and care of such widows was the first perplexing question of the church, occasioning the appointment of deacons, and grew to such di mensions by the conversion of Gentile polygamists and the consequent increase of widows by divorce, that Paul found it necessary to dispose of the ques tion for ever by his instructions to Timothy. 'Widows' simply are widows by divorce ; widows indeed' are widows by death. In the first church in Jerusalem it was sufficient to provide for their wants by daily diaconzd ministration ; but in other churches, where such ministration did not obtain, it became an important question of ecclesiastical economy how such persons were to be suitably provided for. The Oriental seclusion of females, which excluded them from all sorts of business as means of support, greatly enhanced or practically created the difficulties of the question, which sel dom or never occurs in the history of modern missions, because their sphere very slightly touches as yet the region of Oriental womanhood. In the destined extension, however, of the Christian reli gion in the East, the recurrence of the question is certain ; and both to provide for it by ascertaining the apostolic canon, and to contribute to N. T. exegesis, cannot be deemed an irrelevant or trivial task.