VIRGIN, Virgo; in Greek, Pathenos; in Hebrew, Almah.1 These Words properly signify an unmarried Woman, that has preserved the Purity of her Body; but sometimes, by Abuse, they are made use of to express a young Woman, whether she has kept her Virginity, or no; and the more precisely to express the State of Virginity, the Scripture often adds to the Words Maid or Virgin, these, or such like Words,2 neither had any man known her. Sometimes Virgin signifies only a young Woman: Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth: And in the Proverbs,3 Solomon acknowledges the Tokens of Virginity to be very fallacious: Quartum penitus ignoro. ---viam viri in adolescentia. The Hebrew says, in adolescentula. Joel i. 8.
The Hebrew Word Almah signifies a Person concealed; for young unmarried Women lived in retired Apartments, where the Men did not use to go. And when4 young Women were obliged to go out, they were always veiled, and never appeared uncovered, but before their nearest Relations. When Amnon the Son of David had conceived a violent Passion for his Sister Tamar, he could not so much as see her, because she was a Virgin, and kept up very close: For she was a virgin, and 2 Sam. xiii. 2.Amnon thought it hard for him to do any thing to her. When Heliodorus came to Jerusalem, to take away the Treasures of the Temple, the most recluse Virgins came out of their Retirements; some appeared in 2 Macc. iii. 19.the Streets, some at their Windows, and others upon their Walls.
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