And in that day {a} seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only {b} let us be called by thy name, to take away our {c} reproach.

(a) When God will executes this vengeance there will not be one man found to be the head to many women, and they contrary to womanly shamefacedness will seek men, and offer themselves under any condition.

(b) He our husband and let us be called your wives.

(c) For so they thought it to be without a head and husband.

Wesley's Notes

4:1 In that day - In that calamitous time. Seven - Many. A certain number for an uncertain. One man - Because few men shall survive that dreadful stroke. Only - Own us for thy wives. Our reproach - Virginity was esteemed a reproach; children, the usual fruit of marriage, being both an honour to their parents, and a blessing of God, especially to that people, from some of whose loins the Messiah was to spring.

King James Translators' Notes

let...: Heb. let thy name be called upon us

to take...: or, take thou away

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 4

Isa 4:1-6.

that day-the calamitous period described in previous chapter.

seven-indefinite number among the Jews. So many men would be slain, that there would be very many more women than men; for example, seven women, contrary to their natural bashfulness, would sue to (equivalent to "take hold of," Isa 3:6) one man to marry them.

eat . own bread-foregoing the privileges, which the law (Ex 21:10) gives to wives, when a man has more than one.

reproach-of being unwedded and childless; especially felt among the Jews, who were looking for "the seed of the woman," Jesus Christ, described in Isa 4:2; Isa 54:1, 4; Lu 1:25.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

4:1 This first verse belongs to the third chapter. When the troubles should come upon the land, as the unmarried state was deemed reproachful among the Jews, these women would act contrary to common usage, and seek husbands for themselves.

Matthew Henry's Whole Bible Commentary

Chapter 4

In this chapter we have, I. A threatening of the paucity and scarceness of man (v. 1), which might fitly enough have been added to the close of the foregoing chapter, to which it has a plain reference. II. A promise of the restoration of Jerusalem's peace and purity, righteousness and safety, in the days of the Messiah (v. 2-6). Thus, in wrath, mercy is remembered, and gospel grace is a sovereign relief, in reference to the terrors of the law and the desolations made by sin.

Verse 1

It was threatened (ch. 3:25) that the mighty men should fall by the sword in war, and it was threatened as a punishment to the women that affected gaiety and a loose sort of conversation. Now here we have the effect and consequence of that great slaughter of men, 1. That though Providence has so wisely ordered that, communibus annis-on an average of years, there is nearly an equal number of males and females born into the world, yet, through the devastations made by war, there should scarcely be one man in seven left alive. As there are deaths attending the bringing forth of children, which are peculiar to the woman, who was first in transgression, so, to balance that, there are deaths peculiar to men, those by the sword in the high places of the field, which perhaps devour more than child-bed does. Here it is foretold that such multitudes of men should be cut off that there should be seven women to one man. 2. That by reason of the scarcity of men, though marriage should be kept up for the raising of recruits and the preserving of the race of mankind upon earth, yet the usual method of it should be quite altered,-that, whereas men ordinarily make their court to the women, the women should now take hold of the men, foolishly fearing (as Lot's daughters did, when they saw the ruin of Sodom and perhaps thought it reached further than it did) that in a little time there would be none left (Gen. 19:31),-that whereas women naturally hate to come in sharers with others, seven should now, by consent, become the wives of one man,-and that whereas by the law the husband was obliged to provide food and raiment for his wife (Ex. 21:10), which with many would be the most powerful argument against multiplying wives, these women will be bound to support themselves; they will eat bread of their own earning, and wear apparel of their own working, and the man they court shall be at no expense upon them, only they desire to be called his wives, to take away the reproach of a single life. They are willing to be wives upon any terms, though ever so unreasonable; and perhaps the rather because in these troublesome times it would be a kindness to them to have a husband for their protector. Paul, on the contrary, thinks the single state preferable in a time of distress, 1 Co. 7:26. It were well if this were not introduced here partly as a reflection upon the daughters of Zion, that, notwithstanding the humbling providences they were under (ch. 3:18), they remained unhumbled, and, instead of repenting of their pride and vanity, when God was contending with them for them, all their care was to get husbands-that modesty, which is the greatest beauty of the fair sex, was forgotten, and with them the reproach of vice was nothing to the reproach of virginity, a sad symptom of the irrecoverable desolations of virtue.