Today's Favorite Verse: Luke 15:8
"Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?"
I added this note to my scriptures. It shows a great depth of determination on what that coin meant to her.
"In Judea, a bride came to her husband with at least ten silver coins sewn around her head-band, and often more: and her husband knew just how many there were, for he could see them.
They belonged to him, as she did, although the Law did not allow his creditors to seize these personal coins on his wife's head.
In fact, a crafty might give his wife many such coins, yet owe much to a creditor, which was very annoying to the latter. Nevertheless, woe betide the woman who lost her coins: her husband immediately suspected her of a wrong use of them; and the laws of divorce in the Master's day were so heavily loaded against the wife that a man might divorce his wife if but one of those marital coins was missing from her headgear.
That was why that woman in the Master's sharply drawn tale of sweeping so desperately; taking broom and candle in an agony of dismay. She was sweeping, not only for a bit of metal, but for home and shelter and respectability; for her right to a safe and honorable place in society, perhaps even for her right to her children."
(Lady Hoise, in Peloubet's Select Notes on the International Bible Lessons 1956)
It made me ponder on how hard we must work to keep our families together. No effort is to small to preserve it.
Day 3147
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