1 Kings 4:19
And his daughter in law the wife of Phinees, was big with child, and near her time: and hearing the news that the ark of God was taken, and her father in law, and her husband, were dead, she bowed herself and fell in labour: for her pains came upon her on a sudden.
Open 1 Kings 4:19 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Nurus autem ejus, uxor Phinees, prægnans erat, vicinaque partui : et audito nuntio quod capta esset arca Dei, et mortuus esset socer suus et vir suus, incurvavit se et peperit : irruerant enim in eam dolores subiti.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Καὶ νύμφη αὐτοῦ γυνὴ Φεινεὲς συνειληφυῖα τοῦ τεκεῖν· καὶ ἤκουσεν τὴν ἀγγελίαν ὅτι ἐλήμφθη ἡ κιβωτὸς τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ὅτι τέθνηκεν ὁ πενθερὸς αὐτῆς καὶ ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς, καὶ ἔκλαυσεν καὶ ἔτεκεν, ὅτι ἐπεστράφησαν ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν ὠδῖνες αὐτῆς·
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְכַלָּת֣וֹ אֵֽשֶׁת פִּינְחָס֮ הָרָ֣ה לָלַת֒ וַתִּשְׁמַ֣ע אֶת הַשְּׁמֻעָ֔ה אֶל הִלָּקַח֙ אֲר֣וֹן הָאֱלֹהִ֔ים וּמֵ֥ת חָמִ֖יהָ וְאִישָׁ֑הּ וַתִּכְרַ֣ע וַתֵּ֔לֶד כִּֽי נֶהֶפְכ֥וּ עָלֶ֖יהָ צִרֶֽיהָ
Haydock's commentary
Sudden, through extreme affliction. (Menochius)
Josephus says the child was only in his seventh month, but alive. Abulensis thinks he did not long survive his mother.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian On Fasting, Chapter XVI
For even if He does prefer “the works of righteousness,” still not without a sacrifice, which is a soul afflicted with fasts. He, at all events, is the God to whom neither a People incontinent of appetite, nor a priest, nor a prophet, was pleasing. To this day the “monuments of concupiscence” remain, where the People, greedy of “flesh,” till, by devouring without digesting the quails, they brought on cholera, were buried. Eli breaks his neck before the temple doors, his sons fall in battle, his daughter-in-law expires in child-birth: for such was the blow which had been deserved at the hand of God by the shameless house, the defrauder of the fleshly sacrifices. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXVIII
32. “God heard, and He despised:” that is, He gave heed and took vengeance. “And unto nothing He brought Israel exceedingly” ( ver. 60 ). For when God despised, what were they who by God’s help were what they were? But doubtless he is commemorating the doing of that thing, when they were conquered by the Philistines in the time of Heli the priest, and the Ark of the Lord was taken, and with great slaughter they were laid low. This it is that he speaketh of. “And He rejected the tabernacle of Selom, His tabernacle, where He dwelled among men” ( ver. 61 ). He hath elegantly explained why He rejected His tabernacle, when he saith, “where He dwelled among men.” When therefore they were not worthy for Him to dwell among, why should He not reject the tabernacle, which indeed not for Himself He had established, but for their sakes, whom now He judged unworthy for Him to dwell among. …
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Pammachius
4. We read that the wife of Phinehas the priest, on hearing that the ark of the Lord had been taken, was seized suddenly with the pains of travail and that she brought forth a son Ichabod and died a mother in the hands of the women who nursed her. Rachel’s son is called Benjamin, that is ‘son of excellence’ or ‘of the right hand’; but the son of the other, afterwards to be a distinguished priest of God, derives his name from the ark. The same thing has come to pass in our own day, for since Paulina fell asleep the Church has posthumously borne the monk Pammachius, a patrician by his parentage and marriage, rich in alms, and lofty in lowliness. …