Widow

"widow," Cognates of this word appear in Aramaic, Arabic, Akkadian, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. Biblical Hebrew attests it 55 times and in all periods.

The word represents a woman who, because of the death of her husband, has lost her social and economic position. The gravity of her situation was increased if she had no children. In such a circumstance she returned to her father's home and was subjected to the Levirate rule whereby a close male relative surviving her husband was to produce a child through her in her husband's behalf: "Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown…" (Gen 38:11, the first occurrence of the word). These words constitute a promise to Tamar that the disgrace of being without both husband and child would be removed when Shelah was old enough to marry. Even if children had been born before her husband's death, a widow's lot was not a happy one (2Sam 14:5).

Israel was admonished to treat "widows" and other socially disadvantaged people with justice, God Himself standing as their protector (Exod 22:21-24). Wives whose husbands shut them away from themselves are sometimes called "widows": "And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten women his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house, and put them in ward, and fed them, but went not in unto them. So they were shut up unto the day of their death, living in widowhood" (2Sam 20:3). Destroyed, plundered Jerusalem is called a "widow" (Lam 1:1).

Mat 28:13 (in some texts); Mar 12:40, Mar 1:12-43, Luk 2:37, Luk 1:4-26, lit., "a woman a widow;" Luk 7:12, Luk 18:3, Luk 18:5, Luk 20:47, Luk 1:21-3, Act 6:1, Act 9:39, Act 9:41, 1Ti 5:3 (twice), 1Ti 1:5-5, 1Ti 5:11, 1Ti 5:16 (twice); Jam 1:27, 1Ti 5:9 refers to elderly "widows" (not an ecclesiastical "order"), recognized, for relief or maintenance by the church (cp. 1Ti 5:3, 1Ti 5:16), as those who had fulfilled the conditions mentioned; where relief could be ministered by those who had relatives that were "widows" (a likely circumstance in large families), the church was not to be responsible; there is an intimation of the tendency to shelve individual responsibility at the expense of church funds. In Rev 18:7, it is used figuratively of a city forsaken.