5 First of all, he says, God declares that “therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” And lest we should say that this is a quotation from the Old Testament, he asserts that it has been confirmed by the Lord in the Gospel— “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder”: and he immediately adds, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” He next repeats the names of Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, and tells us that they all had wives and in accordance with the will of God begot sons, as though there could be any table of descent or any history of mankind without wives and children.
“There,” says he, is Enoch, who walked with God and was carried up to heaven. There is Noah, the only person who, except his wife, and his sons and their wives, was saved at the deluge, although there must have been many persons not of marriageable age, and therefore presumably virgins. Again, after the deluge, when the human race started as it were anew, men and women were paired together and a fresh blessing was pronounced on procreation, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”
Moreover, free permission was given to eat flesh, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; as the green herb have I given you all.” He then flies off to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom the first had three wives, the second one, the third four, Leah, Rachel, Billah, and Zilpah, and he declares that Abraham by his faith merited the blessing which he received in begetting his son. Sarah, typifying the Church, when it had ceased to be with her after the manner of women, exchanged the curse of barrenness for the blessing of child-bearing.
We are informed that Rebekah went like a prophet to inquire of the Lord, and was told, “Two nations and two peoples are in your womb,” that Jacob served for his wife, and that when Rachel, thinking it was in the power of her husband to give her children, said, “Give me children, or else I die,” he replied, “Am I in God's stead, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” so well aware was he that the fruit of marriage comes from the Lord and not from the husband. We next learn that Joseph, a holy man of spotless chastity, and all the patriarchs, had wives, and that God blessed them all alike through the lips of Moses.
Judah also and Thamar are brought upon the scene, and he censures Onan, slain by the Lord, because he, grudging to raise up seed to his brother, marred the marriage rite. He refers to Moses and the leprosy of Miriam, who, because she chided her brother on account of his wife, was stricken by the avenging hand of God. He praises Samson, I may even say extravagantly panegyrizes the uxorious Nazarite. Deborah also and Barak are mentioned, because, although they had not the benefit of virginity, they were victorious over the iron chariots of Sisera and Jabin.
He brings forward Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, and extols her for arming herself with the stake. He says there was no difference between Jephthah and his virgin daughter, who was sacrificed to the Lord: nay, of the two, he prefers the faith of the father to that of the daughter who met death with grief and tears. He then comes to Samuel, another Nazarite of the Lord, who from infancy was brought up in the tabernacle and was clad in a linen ephod, or, as the words are rendered, in linen vestments: he, too, we are told, begot sons without a stain upon his priestly purity.
He places Boaz and his wife Ruth side by side in his repository, and traces the descent of Jesse and David from them. He then points out how David himself, for the price of two hundred foreskins and at the peril of his life, was bedded with the king's daughter. What shall I say of Solomon, whom he includes in the list of husbands, and represents as a type of the Saviour, maintaining that of him it was written, “Give the king your judgments, O God, and your righteousness unto the king's son”?
And “To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba, and men shall pray for him continually.” Then all at once he makes a jump to Elijah and Elisha, and tells us as a great secret that the spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha. Why he mentioned this he does not say. It can hardly be that he thinks Elijah and Elisha, like the rest, were married men. The next step is to Hezekiah, upon whose praises he dwells, and yet (I wonder why) forgets to mention that he said, “Henceforth I will beget children.”
He relates that Josiah, a righteous man, in whose time the book of Deuteronomy was found in the temple, was instructed by Huldah, wife of Shallum. Daniel also and the three youths are classed by him with the married. Suddenly he betakes himself to the Gospel, and adduces Zachariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his father-in-law, and the rest of the Apostles. His inference is thus expressed: “If they idly urge in defence of themselves the plea that the world in its early stage needed to be replenished, let them listen to the words of Paul, 'I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children.'
And 'Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled.' And 'A wife is bound for so long time as her husband lives; but if the husband be dead, she is free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.' And 'Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled has fallen into transgression: but she shall be saved through the child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.' Surely we shall hear no more of the famous Apostolic utterance, 'And they who have wives as though they had them not.'
It can hardly be that you will say the reason why he wished them to be married was that some widows had already turned back after Satan: as though virgins never fell and their fall was not more ruinous. All this makes it clear that in forbidding to marry, and to eat food which God created for use, you have consciences seared as with a hot iron, and are followers of the Manichæans.” Then comes much more which it would be unprofitable to discuss. At last he dashes into rhetoric and apostrophizes virginity thus: “I do you no wrong, Virgin: you have chosen a life of chastity on account of the present distress: you determined on the course in order to be holy in body and spirit: be not proud: you and your married sisters are members of the same Church.”
Source: Against Jovinianus (New Advent)