And about the time of her death the women that stood by her said unto her, Fear not; for you have borne a son. But she answered not, neither did she regard it.
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Cassiodorus Senator
AD 585
“Their priests fell by the sword and their widows were not mourned.” We read that during the captivity the sons of the priest Eli were put to the sword by the foreigners. The wife of one of them thus widowed suddenly gave birth and prematurely died. So it happened that his widow went wholly unmourned, since they were all preoccupied by the widespread deaths. We must believe that this fate befell many widows among the people, since divine authority has cited a plurality of widows, and we know that no detail recorded is useless. - "Exposition of the Psalms 77.64"
Read the Scriptures and you will never find holy women bearing children in pain, with the exception of Rachel, who, when she was on a journey and in the hippodrome, that is, in the course for horses which had been sold to Egypt, suffered while delivering her son, whom his father later called “son of the right hand.” Eve, when she was expelled from paradise and was told “You will bear children in pain,” is described as experiencing pain in childbirth. The wife of Phinehas, who was bent over and could not stand erect, like the woman whom the devil bound in the gospel, gave birth after she had heard that the ark of God was captured and her people were destroyed. But Sarah, because she was holy and postmenopausal, said to Isaac when he was born: “God has made laughter for me, for whoever hears about this will congratulate me.” The pains, therefore, which overcame the tower of the flock, are the pains of hell and the pains of death, which surrounded and attacked even the Savior but were nev...
