And what of Dalilah? Did she not A hand over the most beautiful and strongest Samson to the aliens, having shorn and bound him through adultery, and kill him? Behold, I have produced three trustworthy witnesses; not only these who are contained in the Scripture. But "at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established" (Matt. 18:16), so that we might not extend the account of the story to a great length. Therefore may the Lord God snatch us away from this error and shame and reproach, and dispose us to live in modesty; and may He bestow upon you to be with a pure conscience toward your spouses, and to make your children, servants, and neighbors gentle and cheerful, so that you may be judged worthy to become partakers of the kingdom of heaven. But since I also promised to speak of the third order, that of widowhood, I shall do this, using but few steps regarding them. A widow woman, according to the apostle Paul (1 Tim. 5:10), ought to be such a one: a nurturer of children, one sharing in the needs of the saints, performing the ministry for strangers, and not running about in the occupations of her own thoughts. For he says, B being clothed, after the death of her husband, in the tunic of widowhood, and being pricked in heart, showing herself in all her habits. But a disorderly widow exists as a wild beast, and going through houses, she displays unbecoming steps: "I am a poor woman, in a helpless state of old age; vast wealth was once mine in fields, in houses, and in livestock and garments, and my husband was quite luxurious; everything I said to him, he would not hear, but because he was a man unskilled in worldly business, he spent it all on his own mind's inclinations; what I did not wish he would embrace, and this man, after his death, has made a triumph for his friends and kinsmen; he left me nothing." The one whom she embraced with her arms while he was living, this one she looks around for here and there after his death, where she might find a secret bedfellow, and under the pretext of prayer or the care C of her house, she becomes a spectacle to the many; and performing lawless deeds, and conceiving in her womb, she keeps it a secret, procuring for herself a myriad of contrivances to abort the infant from her belly, whether through poison or through other unlawful women. And she does not keep the fear of God, who overlooks all things, in her own heart; but practicing sin, she does not blush, and she is ashamed and abashed at the fruit that is born of it. For how many servants have I seen masters due to the love of pleasure of such wicked women! Seeing free-born children standing by them with fear and trembling, having their hands bound upon their breasts, even if they do not wish it, and these men walking about wearing gold belts and silk clothes. Have you heard, lovers of Christ, the explanation of the discourse? Have you recognized the hypothesis of the story? I have recounted the trophies of the unchaste and foolish women. These ways Eve D taught; and the rebuke of her, and the tasting of the disobedience. But having remembered the temperate and glorious women for a little while, we shall cease the discourse. Behold for me the temperate woman, the Sarephthan woman, who nourished the prophet Elijah in the time of famine. Behold for me the Shunammite, who showed hospitality to Elisha in her house, at which [act] he even raised her child. Behold for me Anna, who loosened the bonds of barrenness, and bore Samuel, and through prayer and supplication was declared a mother. Behold for me Sarah and Rebecca, the pure and undefiled cohabitation of them, which they displayed to the patriarchs. Behold for me Susanna, who through modesty condemned unjust elders to death. Emulate these women, the undefiled nature of the one, the prayer of another; the hospitality of one, the temperance of another, the God-pleasing life of another, so that you may obtain the kingdom of heaven, which may it be granted to us all to obtain, by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father be honor and glory, together with the holy and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
CONCERNING ABRAHAM AND ISAAC
God relocates the righteous Abraham from his kinsmen, and from all his own people, and he was persevering in his troubles in a foreign land, awaiting the hope of the promise. A great trial is brought to the patriarch, through which the steadfastness toward God was shown. Much time passed; youth was finally withering like a flower; old age was at the doors. Nature, suffering its own fate, was becoming enfeebled, bending toward old age. The power and strength for childbearing was extinguished in him [alt-version omitted] and in his wife; the body of both was yielding to nature, their youth having been spent. But the hope toward God, flourishing within them, was not only ageless, but also invincible. Whence, even beyond hope, she bore Isaac, who bore the image of the Master in all things. It was not a work of nature for a dead womb to conceive, and for dried breasts to provide milk for Isaac; it was not a work of nature for the Virgin Mary to conceive without a man, and without corruption to bring forth the Savior of all. He made Sarah a mother in old age, and revealed Mary as a virgin after birth-giving. An angel in the tent said to the patriarch: "At this time there shall be a son for Sarah" (Gen. 18:10); an angel in Bethlehem said to Mary: "Behold, you, the blessed one, shall bear a son." Sarah laughed, seeing the barrenness, beholding the deadness, disbelieving the word: "How," she says, "will this be, when I and Abraham are both inactive toward child-bearing?" Mary also, seeing her virginity, and holding its seals unbroken, wondered: "For how shall this be for me, [having known] no man?"