Beauty and Chastity

“For before he had finished speaking,” Scripture says, “Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, carrying her water jar on her shoulders. The young woman was very beautiful in appearance; she was a virgin, and no man had known her.” Why tell me about her physical beauty? So that you may learn the extraordinary degree of her chastity and the beauty within her soul. Chastity is admirable in itself, but much more admirable when it exists together with beauty.

For this reason, when Scripture was about to tell us about Joseph and his chastity, it first mentioned his physical beauty: “He was handsome in form and very beautiful in appearance.” Only then did it recount his chastity, showing that his beauty did not lead him into sexual immorality. Beauty is not the cause of fornication, nor does unattractiveness necessarily produce chastity. Many women who have shone in bodily beauty have shone even more greatly in chastity; and others who were unattractive and plain in appearance became uglier still in soul, stained by countless acts of sexual immorality. The cause of either one is not the nature of the body, but the choice of the soul.