widows

87:2.7The an­cients were so anx­ious to get rid of a ghost that they of­fered it ev­ery­thing which might have been de­sired dur­ing life. Ghosts wanted wives and ser­vants; a well-to-do sav­age ex­pected that at least one slave wife would be buried alive at his death. It later be­came the cus­tom for a widow to com­mit sui­cide on her hus­band’s grave. When a child died, the mother, aunt, or grand­mother was of­ten stran­gled in or­der that an adult ghost might ac­com­pany and care for the child ghost. And those who thus gave up their lives usu­ally did so will­ingly; in­deed, had they lived in vi­o­la­tion of cus­tom, their fear of ghost wrath would have de­nuded life of such few plea­sures as the prim­i­tives en­joyed.

175:1.9“Fur­ther­more, these self-cen­tered rulers de­light in do­ing their good works so that they will be seen by men. They make broad their phy­lac­ter­ies and en­large the bor­ders of their of­fi­cial robes. They crave the chief places at the feasts and de­mand the chief seats in the syn­a­gogues. They covet lauda­tory salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places and de­sire to be called rabbi by all men. And even while they seek all this honor from men, they se­cretly lay hold of wid­ows’ houses and take profit from the ser­vices of the sa­cred tem­ple. For a pre­tense these hyp­ocrites make long prayers in pub­lic and give alms to at­tract the no­tice of their fel­lows.

132:6.2There was the widow with five chil­dren whose hus­band had been ac­ci­den­tally killed. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the loss of his own fa­ther by an ac­ci­dent, and they went re­peat­edly to com­fort this mother and her chil­dren, while Ga­nid sought money from his fa­ther to pro­vide food and cloth­ing. They did not cease their ef­forts un­til they had found a po­si­tion for the el­dest boy so that he could help in the care of the fam­ily.

146:6.2When Je­sus sought to leave Cana and go to Nain, a great mul­ti­tude of be­liev­ers and many cu­ri­ous peo­ple fol­lowed af­ter him. They were bent on be­hold­ing mir­a­cles and won­ders, and they were not to be dis­ap­pointed. As Je­sus and his apos­tles drew near the gate of the city, they met a fu­neral pro­ces­sion on its way to the near-by ceme­tery, car­ry­ing the only son of a wid­owed mother of Nain. This woman was much re­spected, and half of the vil­lage fol­lowed the bear­ers of the bier of this sup­pos­edly dead boy. When the fu­neral pro­ces­sion had come up to Je­sus and his fol­low­ers, the widow and her friends rec­og­nized the Mas­ter and be­sought him to bring the son back to life. Their mir­a­cle ex­pectancy was aroused to such a high pitch they thought Je­sus could cure any hu­man dis­ease, and why could not such a healer even raise the dead? Je­sus, while be­ing thus im­por­tuned, stepped for­ward and, rais­ing the cov­er­ing of the bier, ex­am­ined the boy. Dis­cov­er­ing that the young man was not re­ally dead, he per­ceived the tragedy which his pres­ence could avert; so, turn­ing to the mother, he said: “Weep not. Your son is not dead; he sleeps. He will be re­stored to you.” And then, tak­ing the young man by the hand, he said, “Awake and arise.” And the youth who was sup­posed to be dead pres­ently sat up and be­gan to speak, and Je­sus sent them back to their homes.

149:1.9Many oth­ers sought heal­ing for wholly self­ish pur­poses. A rich widow of Tyre, with her ret­inue, came seek­ing to be healed of her in­fir­mi­ties, which were many; and as she fol­lowed Je­sus about through Gal­i­lee, she con­tin­ued to of­fer more and more money, as if the power of God were some­thing to be pur­chased by the high­est bid­der. But never would she be­come in­ter­ested in the gospel of the king­dom; it was only the cure of her phys­i­cal ail­ments that she sought.

82:3.12Un­der cer­tain mores wid­ow­hood was greatly to be feared, wid­ows be­ing ei­ther killed or al­lowed to com­mit sui­cide on their hus­bands’ graves, for they were sup­posed to go over into spir­it­land with their spouses. The sur­viv­ing widow was al­most in­vari­ably blamed for her hus­band’s death. Some tribes burned them alive. If a widow con­tin­ued to live, her life was one of con­tin­u­ous mourn­ing and un­bear­able so­cial re­stric­tion since re­mar­riage was gen­er­ally dis­ap­proved.

172:4.2And now, as the evening drew on and the crowds went in quest of nour­ish­ment, Je­sus and his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers were left alone. What a strange day it had been! The apos­tles were thought­ful, but speech­less. Never, in their years of as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus, had they seen such a day. For a mo­ment they sat down by the trea­sury, watch­ing the peo­ple drop in their con­tri­bu­tions: the rich putting much in the re­ceiv­ing box and all giv­ing some­thing in ac­cor­dance with the ex­tent of their pos­ses­sions. At last there came along a poor widow, scant­ily at­tired, and they ob­served as she cast two mites (small cop­pers) into the trum­pet. And then said Je­sus, call­ing the at­ten­tion of the apos­tles to the widow: “Heed well what you have just seen. This poor widow cast in more than all the oth­ers, for all these oth­ers, from their su­per­fluity, cast in some tri­fle as a gift, but this poor woman, even though she is in want, gave all that she had, even her liv­ing.”