And seven women shall take hold of one man that day, saying we will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name; take thou away our reproach.
Let’s look at the two dominant theories:
The first argues that the prophet was using a figurative description of conditions that would prevail in Israel because of wars in which so many men would be killed, creating a masculinity scarcity that there would be a large preponderance of women in pursuit and desperate for men.
The second argues that Prophet Isaiah was talking about modern day denominations because the word Woman in prophecy represents Church. And the prophet says that these churches/denominations will be false because they will eat their own food (doctrines) and wear their own apparel (righteousness) but hide under the NAME of the one man (God/Jesus).
Am not going to discuss these theories I will leave that to you, my reader. What I want to do is to give a brief background and the context within which the text is situated.
The passage is found in a prophetic scroll of the prophet Isaiah. The times and audience of the book are stated in Isaiah 1:1:
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
Apart from the thematic division of the book through a theological debate on the authorship of the whole book of Isaiah that argues that there are three Isaiahs in the book:
- Proto-Isaiah = Isaiah chapters 1-39
- Deutro-Isaiah = Isaiah 40-55
- Trito-Isaiah = Isaiah 55-66
The most convenient outline of the book is one that divides the book into two:
- The Judgement of God. Chapters 1-39
- God as the Gracious Redeemer. Chapters 40-66
As you can see, Isaiah 4:1 is under the judgement theme by proto-Isaiah, and before we do any apocalypse (like the first two theories rush to do), we need to appreciate the text from its original context.
From chapter 1 to 4, Isaiah tells three parables. The first one is in chapter 2, about the mountain of the house of the Lord, the other is in chapter 3 about the daughters of Zion and the third one is in chapter 4 about the seven women.
But what background or historical events that influence the Prophet’s speech?
By the time Isaiah tells these parables, Judah was a target not only to foreign superpowers like Assyria but even to its kinsmen the kingdom of Israel because Judah had earlier refused to enter into a coalition of Israel and Syria to resist the super Assyrians.
Judah under the reign of King Ahaz befriended Assyria even though Isaiah opposed this. Yes, Assyria helped but it had interests too. Then Judah sought help from another super power known as Egypt, again against Isaiah’s oracle.
They succeeded but not for long for they eventually fell under the reign of Hezekiah.
In essence, the parable in Isaiah 4:1 is about Judah in which Jerusalem. The people merely have a tag of Yahweh but practically living by the political trends and not following the theocracy upon which they were founded.
So the politics of monarchism taking the throne of theocracy is what Isaiah 4:1 is about.
You can draw as many devotions as you want. However, you must keep in mind that a parable always has one principal lesson. Get it first before you get all sorts of revelations.
God bless you, I invoke TRUTH, REASON and FAITH
Pr ITM White
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 