Rebekah’s Chastity in Public Life

Scripture did not call her a virgin a second time without reason. After saying, “She was a virgin,” it added, “She was a virgin, and no man had known her.” For many women, while keeping the body untouched, fill the soul with great licentiousness: they adorn themselves, draw countless lovers from every direction, excite the eyes of young men, and lay snares and pitfalls for them. Moses, then, wanted to show that Rebekah was not like this, but was a virgin in both respects—in body and in soul. That is why he says, “She was a virgin, and no man had known her.”

Yet she had many opportunities to become known to men: first, because of her physical beauty; second, because of the kind of work she did. If she had always remained in an inner room, as young women do now, never entering the marketplace and never leaving her father's house, it would not have been so great a praise to say that no man had known her. But when you see her going out into public, compelled to carry water every day, once and twice and often, and yet remaining unknown to any man, then you can best appreciate her praise.

If a young woman who goes out only rarely, even one who is unattractive and plain, and who is accompanied by many maidservants, has often had her character corrupted by such outings, how could she not be worthy of ten thousand expressions of wonder? Every day she left her father's house alone, not merely going into public but going to the spring to draw water, where many other people necessarily gathered. Yet neither her repeated outings, nor her beauty, nor the crowds she encountered, nor anything else corrupted her character. She remained undefiled in both body and soul, preserving her chastity even more carefully than women who remain secluded in the women's quarters. She proved to be the kind of woman Paul seeks when he says, “that she may be holy in body and spirit.”