They deny [it] — some of the Rabbins, as Radak [Kimhi], R. Jonah, [and] others; and of the more recent Christians a few certain [men], as Lyra here (and on Matthew 1), Vatablus here, Pagninus, Arias Montanus (here and on Isa. 23), [and] Titelmannus on Matthew 1. But they will [hold her] to be a “caupona-woman [cauponaria mulier]” — or, as Lyra and Abulensis call [her], a “hostess-keeper [hospitalaria],” [or,] D. Augustine bk. 18 City [of God] ch. 18, a “stable-keeper [stabularia]” — everywhere all today, with Cicero, Ovid, and Horace supporting [it], [calling her] a “hostess [hospita].” Arguments for them can be these seven. 1. The Targum turns [it] בונדקיתא [bunedkita], that is, “a hostess-woman [foeminam hospitem],” who receives all coming [as] guests in hospitality. For it is derived from the Greek πανδοχεῖα [pandocheia] or πανδοχεύτρια [pandocheutria, “innkeeper (fem.)”]; and among the learned it is established [that] in the Targum there are very many words from the Greek tongue. 2. The Hebrew מָזוֹן [mazon] signifies “food [escam],” [and] food of every kind. Therefore the Hebrew by which Rahab is called זוֹנָה [zonah] will signify “a preparer and vendor of foods,” as Radak expounds. 3. [It] would be absurd [that] these spies — upright indeed and approved, as above [was] said — turned aside to a whore [scortum]. For either they wished to fornicate with her, or not: if they wished [it], how shameful [was] this their infamy? how intemperate [their] lust? — that, sent to a business so serious, constituted in so great a danger, in a hostile city, and at the very first entrance, before all [things], they would wish to give work [attention] to pleasure? If not, [they are] yet little prudent, [and only] simulated [to be] chaste and cautious, who enter a harlot’s house — which, as Plautus says, [is] “Lydus, the door of Orcus [hell], and a rapid river, where [one] cannot cross safely; where all [things are] barbed, and [things] which dig [wound] the mind, [where they] dissimulate [conceal] goods, and wound deeds and reputation.” And our Solomon, Proverbs 5:3: “A dripping honeycomb [are] the lips of a harlot, and her throat [is] smoother than oil; but her last [ends] [are] bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet descend into death, and her steps penetrate to the lower regions; through the path of life she walks not; her steps are wandering and untraceable. Now therefore, my son, hear me, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Make thy way far from her, and approach not the doors of her house.” And ch. 7 v. 27: “The way of hell [is] the harlot’s house, penetrating into the interiors of death.” But by so much the more dangerous [is] that kind of eating-house [ganea], by how much [those] of them who gorge themselves into them [have] a more vivid body and a more flourishing age. “There,” says the same Plautus, “nothing can be made more alluring.”
“Night, woman, [and] wine [are ruinous] to a young man [adolescentulus].”
But [that] these [spies] were “youths [iuvenes],” brawny and strong, [it was] established before, [in] quest. 3. 4. Rahab, that [woman], afterward Salmon — the son of Nahshon, the Prince of the Jews — took [as] wife, Matthew 1:5. But a vile little woman [muliercula], who had lost [her] modesty, and had basely prostituted herself to others — would a man most ample [and] most honorable join her to himself in wedlock? 5. If the Hebrew name signified “harlot [meretrix],” it would suffice [that], by that very [word], Rahab [had been] once disgraced [deformasse] by the crime. But now, both here and below ch. 6 v. 17 & 25, and likewise in [i.e. by] St. Paul and St. James—
(col. 337)
—the word is iterated repeatedly. 6. Greek and Latin names too can, just like the Hebrew, be drawn into a more honest [honestior] signification. For πόρνη [pornē, “harlot”] is derived from πέρνημι [pernēmi], which is “to sell [vendo]”; and from “earning [merendo]” (as Nonius notes once and again) [comes] meretrix [“harlot,” lit. “earner”]. Why, then, [could] a “caupona-woman [cauponatrix],” [one] who sells foods and merits [earns] by furnishing hospitality, not be adorned by these names in a good part? 7. Finally, Rahab — from this [woman’s] progeny the Lord drew [his] origin, Matthew 1. But how indecorous, and to Christians insulting, [would it be that] the Virgin herself, the son of the Virgin, the herald and author of virginity, the most chaste of men, the most holy God, [were] procreated from a whore [scortum]?
These [arguments] indeed are plausible; yet [there is] more of solid truth in the other opinion — namely, [that] she was truly and properly a harlot [meretricem fuisse]. For, firstly, all the texts assert it, and indeed with those words which elsewhere are never taken in a good part, but perpetually — both in the scriptures, and in exotic [secular] writers too — signify an unchaste woman and a whore. So that [it] sufficiently appears [that] these more recent Rabbins, from whom that foregoing opinion flowed, even in this place, by these words subjected [supplied] a notion which was not really inherent, but which had pleased the Rabbins themselves, from [their] own invention and lust. Let us run through, I beseech, the individual [terms]. 1. The Hebrew is zonach [זוֹנָה]. This occurs in the Bibles very often, and another signification [is] nowhere [found] — as Gen. 38:15: “Whom [Thamar], when Judah had seen, he suspected [her] to be a harlot”; afterward, v. 20 & 21, she is called Kedeschah [קְדֵשָׁה]. Levit. 21:7: “A whore and a vile prostitute [prostibulum] he [the priest] shall not take to wife”; v. 14: “the sordid, and a harlot, he shall not accept.” Deut. 23:17: “Thou shalt not offer the hire of a prostitute [merces prostibuli], nor the price of a dog, in the house of the Lord thy God” — and that [woman] a little before was called also Kedeschah, when it is said: “There shall not be a harlot of the daughters of Israel.” 3 Kings [1 Kings] 3:16: “There came two harlot women to the King.” Isa. 23:15: “Tyre shall be as the canticle of a harlot.” Jerem. 2:20: “Under every [green] tree thou didst prostitute thyself [as] a harlot.” Ezech. 16:31: “Thou hast not been made as a harlot” — and v. 4, where our [Vulgate] says “thou shalt cease to fornicate,” Hebraically [it] is “I will make thee cease from harlotry,” that is, that thou be no more a harlot. Hosea 4:14: “They consorted with harlots.” Nor [is it] in this manner [only] a noun, but also a verb from which [the noun comes]: zanach [זָנָה] always avails [means] “to fornicate and to play the harlot,” Gen. 38:23, Levit. 19:28[29], Judges 19:2, Hosea 4:12, Ezech. 16:34, and elsewhere too many times [nimis quam saepe]; likewise other [words] which are names from this [root] — “fornications, defilements [stupra], and harlotries” [these words] always throng [in], as zenunim [זְנוּנִים] Gen. 38:24, 4 Kings [2 Kings] 9:22, Hosea 1:2, ch. 2:4, Ezech. 13, ch. 23:11, Nahum 3:4; zenuth [זְנוּת] Num. 14:33, Jerem. 3:2 & 9, ch. 13, Ezech. 43:7-8-9, Hosea 4:11; and thazenuth [תַּזְנוּת] Ezech. 16:34, ch. 16:26, ch. 23:7, 8, 17, 29, & 35. [There] is one single place in which — because mention of wine is made — the Rabbins think [that] she [Rahab] could be drawn to [mean] “her caupona [tavern],” Joel 3:3; or because they divide the Hebrew otherwise, v. 9, where our [Vulgate] thus [renders it]: “And they set a boy in a brothel [prostibulum], and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.” For instead of “in a brothel,” because [the word] is bazonach [בַּזּוֹנָה], they themselves expound [it] “in a caupona [tavern]”
(col. 338)
—“or in the wine-shop [oenopolium].” And because [it] is ridiculous [that] a boy be made a “caupona-woman” or a “wine-shop,” they expound the “in” by “with [cum],” so that it would be “with a caupona-woman.” But this [is] against the old Latin Interpreter, and the most ancient 70, and the perspicuous sense of the text — [and is] excessive violence. For the Lord complains about the gravest sins of the Jews, and threatens them [with] judgment and most bitter punishments — [is it] because, by selling wine and receiving [it], they applied [their] sons to guests? No. But because they prostituted them [their children] to an infamous and unspeakable lust — as I also expounded about these [passages], ch. 4 bk. 2 on the Maccabees, fol. 569. And certainly, otherwise, [it] would have to be put not so much “a boy” as “a girl [puella]” [that is] azonah [as zonah], so that she herself would be the “caupona-woman,” and “boys from the wine-cups.” And therefore, in the exposition of this place too, Radak [Kimhi] will depart from his own [fellows], and apply himself to us. 2. The Greek πόρνη [pornē] is, in the same places, [used] even where kedeschah is read. Nay, that very name — into the Hebrew, or rather the Chaldee [Aramaic] tongue — the Targum made to immigrate, Ezech. 23, as [it] is in the Methurgeman [Aramaic lexicon]. And in the New Testament likewise frequently: Matthew 21:31 (twice); Luke 15:30; 1 Corinth. 6:15, 16; Apocalypse [Revelation] 17 (more often) and ch. 19 v. 2. Nay, even πόρνος [pornos] and πόρνη [means] “stuprator, fornicator,” or even “cinaedus [catamite]”: Deut. 23:17; 1 Corinth. 5:9, 10, 11, ch. 6:9 & 18; Ephes. 5:5; Heb. 12 & 13; Apoc. 21 & 22; and πορνεία [porneia, “fornication”] Matthew 5:32, ch. 15:19, ch. 19:9, Mark 7:21, John 8:4, Acts 15, and elsewhere so often that [it would be] disgusting to enumerate [them]. And by that name πόρνη Rahab is designated — not [only] in this manner [in] this chapter, but also Hebrews 11:31 by D. Paul, and by St. James in [his] epistle ch. 2 v. 25. About the Latin meretrix, in the same places [there] is the same entire reckoning, except that somewhere its Interpreter puts another synonym — “brothel [prostibulum],” namely. Since, therefore, so often these names are in the divine books, and are always lustful, nor [is there] any [place] where [it] could be brought forth [that a name] denotes a “caupona-woman,” is [it] not clearer than the noonday light [that] this signification, in this place, is feigned and obtruded by the Rabbins alone — because they thus will [it]? Let their followers [asseclae] bring forth, if in any way they can, into that same honest signification, any [single] example — now not from the sacred volumes, but from so many and such ancient Greek or Latin authors — even one single [example]; or let them ingenuously confess [that] they, without reason and judgment, adjoin more of faith to the Rabbins than [is] fair.
Now, secondly. She dwelt outside the paternal house, in [her] own dwelling, and had no husband and no children — as is gathered from this: that, when so diligently she enumerates all her own [family], v. 13, of a husband and children she makes no mention; whereas, as Tullius [Cicero] says, Offices bk. 1, “The first society is in marriage itself, the next in children.” Either, therefore, she was an honest widow, or a harlot — not, [as] what Cajetan asserts, merely a widow (because, as of Thamar, Judith, and others, [it] would somewhere be signified [so]). Therefore, a harlot. 3. The old Fathers, Greek and Latin, with one mind and as it were with one voice, all profess [that] Rahab had [her] unchastity in the open [in propatulo]. How, therefore, [could] we desert these [Fathers], [who] retain the proper force of the sacred words, and prefer the Rabbinical brains, inventing whatever [they please] by their own arbitration? Nay rather, we will hear those [Fathers] rather, who are St. Clement (epist. to the Ephesians); St. Irenaeus (bk. 4 ch. 37); Origen (hom. 1 & 3 & 7); most clearly St. Ephrem (serm. 2 On Penitence, tome 1 fol. 158, and [in his] sermon on the wo[man]—
(col. 339)
—[the sermon] on the sinful woman, tome 3; St. Nazianzen orat. 16; St. Chrysostom hom. 40 To the People, “Rahab was a harlot, but was saved [salvata fuit]” (so hom. 3 on Matthew, hom. 2 to the Romans, hom. 5 On Penitence, hom. On the sinful woman and the Pharisee — which is now for the first time edited in St. Ephrem, tome 3 — [and] hom. On the Circus, in [i.e. cited by] I. Caes. Bullenger bk. On the Circus); Theodoret here q. 2, and on Ps. 86, on Heb. 11; Procopius here; Euthymius on Matthew 1; St. Ambrose bk. 8 on Luke ch. 17, [his] book On Faith ch. 5, book 2 On Virgins, [his] book to the lapsed virgin (near the close): “Thou art able, Lord, to break my chains, by which I have been bound and constricted — thou who didst not spurn the sordid Rahab”; [his] book On Solomon ch. 5, on Ps. 37 & 40: “Rahab was a harlot, who nourished herself with the stipends of perfidy and intemperance.” St. Augustine, book Against Lying ch. 15 & 17, on Ps. 86, serm. 105 q. 2. Here [also] D. Jerome, epist. to Pammachius, and [in his] prologue on Hosea. Josephus Abbas [Abbot Joseph] in [i.e. cited by] Cassian, Collation 17 ch. 17: “Of that very Rahab, scripture commemorates not only no [monument] of virtue, but even monuments of unchastity.” Peter Damian bk. 6 ep. 5 calls her “a Gentile brothel [gentile postibulum],” as below [it] will be cited, part 3 of this chapter q. 2. Nay, even the more ancient Rabbins, and some of our heretics, agree: the Talmud of Jerusalem in Seder 4, tract Rosh Hashanah [reading] ch. 1; and the Babylonian [Talmud] in [tractates] chatab & mechiltha [reading uncertain]. Calvin, on this passage: “Why some flee the name ‘harlot,’ and expound zonach [as one] who exercises a caupona [tavern], I do not see.” And again: “Since the name zonach everywhere generally (nay, without [any] ‘generally’) signifies a whore, no reason here compels [us] to depart from the received usage.”
4. Finally, the truth of this old [received] opinion is established by dissolving [answering] those [things] which were objected. Therefore:
To the first I say: [it is] not clear whether that word [is] from the Greeks. For many other [words] in the Targum [are] foreign. 2. [Even] if [it] be from the Greeks, yet perhaps [it] was taken for πανδοκεύτρια [pandokeutria, “inn-hostess”] — [a hostess] who would admit all, not to hospitality only, but also to her own bed, and to herself. For by the same cause harlots are called by certain Greeks λαῦραι, δημόσιαι, πανδόσιαι, διάφοροι, δημιουργοὶ γυναῖκες [various Greek terms for public women — reading approximate: “alley-women, public [women], all-giving, promiscuous, working-women”]. But because Eustathius (p. 10, 82) says [these are so] said σεμνότητος λόγῳ [semnotētos logō, “by a word of dignity” — i.e. as a euphemism], I say similarly. 3. [that] that Chaldee [Aramaic] Paraphrast, for the cause of modesty, often calls harlots by various less-sordid names. For, as Masius observes, somewhere he calls [her], for zonah, “the prostituting [woman],” and “she who cannot contain herself within [her] house, but is continually before the doors”; elsewhere, “wandering and roving”; sometimes “deceitful”; but now “pandocceutria [inn-hostess].” And lest anyone think this [to be] feigned by me, thus also in other places, where there is no doubt about a whore being treated, he [the Targum] converts [it], Judges 11:1, Ezech. 23:4.
To the second I say: 1. [that] not from zoun, but from zanah [זָנָה] — which is “to fornicate and to be lustful” — does the name zonah exist, as the Rabbins themselves note in that second verb. Then, [even] if [it] be from zoun, another twofold [explanation], if not more probable, certainly no more improbable, can be brought [as to] why from that verb [it] would [mean] “harlot.” One, because this name is from zan, which — Ps. 143[144]:13 — signifies “a various kind, and every kind of abundance [copia].” Since, therefore, promiscuously to men of every kind a harlot makes [gives] the abundance of her own body — is this etymology inept? The other: the mother, fount, and origin of lust is satiety [saturitas], and the affluence of things — whence also a certain one said: “Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus grows cold” [Sine Cerere & Baccho friget Venus]. And in Athenaeus bk. 1, Clearchus [says]:
(col. 340)
”…Venus is present, where [there is] a great abundance of things. On the contrary, that [Venus] hates wretched [men], and flees [poor] men.” Why not, then, and rightly, hence [derive] “harlot”? Certainly, on account of that variety and abundance, the Rabbins say, 2 Chron. 16:14, [that] the King [Asa was] buried in various aromatics and spices — [what] our [Vulgate has as] “in the aromatics and unguents of a harlot.” [As to the fact] that some derive even “arms [arma]” from the same zoun, [they would do so] more easily from azen, since Rahab would make [it] “Ionach” [reading uncertain].
To the third, I say, first, [that though] Rahab was a harlot, the spies were ignorant [of it] — either because by that token, habit, and appearance she was not [such] as [harlots] among the Egyptians and Hebrews were wont to be. For just as Gen. 38:16, from the fact that her face was covered, Judah suspected Thamar to be a harlot, so, on the contrary, because Rahab was not covered [veiled], or certainly was not in that dress and countenance which was customary to the harlots whom they had either seen or heard [of], about her they suspected nothing such. Or even because in so liberal and honest a manner she invited them into her house. For it could happen, as Josephus narrates bk. 5 ch. 1, [that] they, having first gone to the city, then [sought] a lodging in which they might turn aside, and about those [things] which they wished might hear something, [and] would seek [it] in that district; but she, very humanely to them, and plainly hospitably — as if the wife of some honest and hospitable man — offered her house of her own accord. For this seems to be signified by St. Paul, Heb. 11:31, [and] St. James 2:25, when her hospitality is praised — especially if with him [Paul] be weighed that [phrase] “with peace [cum pace],” and with this one [James] ὑποδεξαμένη [hypodexamenē, “having welcomed [under her roof]”]. For that [of Paul] is “with benevolence and great beneficence”; but this [of James] imports something of sweetness in [the] receiving — so that what in St. Paul is δέχεσθαι μετὰ εἰρήνης [dechesthai meta eirēnēs, “to receive with peace”], this in St. James be ὑποδέχεσθαι [hypodechesthai, “to welcome under [one’s roof]”]. For the Greeks have certain words [compounded] with ὑπό [hypo] [expressing] a grateful affability, and industry. I say, secondly: Be it [that] they knew [her] to have been a harlot — [one] who, as [in] Proverbs 9:15, “would sit in the doors of her house upon a seat, that she might call those passing by the way, and going on their journey: ‘Who is a little one [parvulus]? let him turn aside to me’” — nevertheless not for the cause of sinning did they turn aside to her. For even if — as Tacitus reproves [it], bk. 5 of the Histories — “the Jewish nation was most prone [proiectissima] to lust,” and from it very many [are] easily [caught], where there was occasion, with little-women [mulierculae] — as Judah (Gen. 38), Samson (Judges 14), David (2 Kings [2 Sam.] 11), others (Num. 25) — yet, that we may judge better of these [spies], [this] is made [likely] not [by] that opinion of the Rabbins [that] they were Caleb and Phinehas (for above I denied [it], q. 3), but first, because [it] would seem [a mark] of temerity and wickedness to accuse of so great a disgrace those whom scripture does not carp even by a single word; then, because their preoccupation, haste, [and] trepidation would exclude all lasciviousness. And [the things] indeed are true which are brought [forward] about the infamy of harlots’ hovels [gurgustia] and [their] dangers; but their mind was far [distant] from these. They entered to that [woman] because in the city [there] was somewhere for them to hide; but nowhere [was there] a more convenient hiding-place, because [her house was] the nearest of all to the city gate, v. 15 — so that they might conveniently accomplish [it], [and] could commodiously go out; and because it had more eyes [views], since it had an exit even through the walls, so that if necessity urged, [it] would be allowed to leap out thence; finally, also because [she was] a harlot. For once [olim] certain signs [markers] were assigned to harlots’ arches [fornices] and houses, by which they would prohibit access to others:
“To an unknown [man] the harlot joins [her] body — a Quirite [citizen]; / opposite, she moves the people away before the bar [ante seram].”
And bk. 1, Epigram of Martial—
(col. 341)
“But the harlot drives away witnesses, both by veil and by bar [sera]; / and rare are the chinks that gape for the arch [fornix].” [Martial.]
What [of the fact] that the very entrance to a whore availed for removing the suspicion of the exploration? For prudent men — industrious, curious, busy, timorous — do not do this, but [only] the fatuous, the ignoble, the dissolute, the idle, the careless, and the astute [do]. And, on account of these so many and so great opportunities, they could of their own accord solicit that [woman], ask for her lodging, and offer a price much greater than they could get from any lovers, for the whole night. But since she herself, of her own accord (as I said), invited them so hospitably, and [they] were in mind stronger against pleasure, and more cautious of their own dangers — why not enter an [otherwise] infamous roof? Nor do I doubt but that a divine instinct [prompting] was in each [party]: in her, that she should invite; in them, that they should enter; in her, that she should conciliate these to herself, on account of the impending destruction of the city; in them, that they should well conduct their business, and return thence safe and unharmed.
To the fourth. So great a contrivance [machina] this seemed to the Author of the Opus imperfectum, and to Theophylact on Matthew ch. 1, that they doubted whether this our Rahab and that [Rahab] of Matthew 1 were the same. But the same [identity] all the other Fathers confess, and scripture sufficiently indicates, while, with the names of women of approved virtue kept silent, it recounts this [woman] out of order [extra ordinem] with several other unpraised [women]. But why a most ample and most honest man took a harlot [as wife], they ask — [though] they ought also to ask why [he took] a Gentile. For that too [was] forbidden, Exod. 34:16, Deut. 7:3. They will respond [that] this was done by the permission of the law, because she had ceased to be a Gentile, and had embraced the true worship of God. But I say similarly, [that] she ceased to be a harlot, and, with the true worship of God, embraced the study of chastity. Yet [some] infamy still hung about her name — not greater, however, than that she had once worshipped idols; but all that [infamy] was rubbed off by the praise of the new religion, [her] change of life, and — what is the chief [thing] — her most recent [service] toward the spies and toward the whole Israelite people, most florid and glorious. And if anything still [remained], from which an ingenuous man could abhor to dwell [with her], all that Salmon’s outstanding piety toward God and toward his own commonwealth reckoned for nothing, and absorbed — while, all else set aside, looking to the highest benefaction of this [woman], he wished to honor her with the prize of his own marriage — Salmon, namely, a chief man of the first tribe. For if, in Athenaeus bk. 13, to Abydenus…—to a harlot, by whose information they had driven off servitude, they returned favor, [and] labored so greatly — why not also this our [Israelite] to our Israelite [woman]?
To the fifth. So often “harlot” is named, so that to sinners there may be an example of divine bounty and mercy, if they desist from sins and seriously correct them: [and] so that she herself be praised — [she] who had been such [a sinner], nor afterward remained such; [and so] that the Lord be praised, who casts not off the resipiscent [those who come to their senses], but follows them, in this age and the future, with his mercy. For [thus] it happens which the Apostle says, Rom. 5:20: “where the delict abounded, grace superabounded.” And on this account David’s adultery is recorded in scripture, 2 Kings [2 Sam.] 12; Matthew the publican, Matt. 9; Mary Magdalene the sinner, Luke 7:37 & 39. And indeed, if by the name “harlot” here were signified a vendress of foods and lodging, what [praise so great would it be]?—
(col. 342)
—for that praise would be so great, that it would need to be iterated so often?
To the sixth. [The things] which could be made from the etymologies of words are not all to be made; but the usage of those speaking and writing is to be considered. Otherwise, how [many] absurd and ridiculous [things there would be]? Certainly, in this place, that strong and praised woman who [in] so many [verses of] Proverbs 31 is extolled with praises will be πόρνη [pornē, “harlot”], because she made fine linen and sold [it], and handed a girdle to the Canaanite [Prov 31:24]! Anna, that prophetess the daughter of Phanuel, who beheld CHRIST [as an] infant in the temple, and followed [him] with prophecies, [will] be a harlot, because she had already gathered very much of merits with God! And [she will] be a harlot because she did not depart from the temple, serving [God] by fastings and prayers on this night [and] day, Luke 2:37! Nay, the most Blessed Virgin, for the same cause of earning the highest [merits], would be a harlot! But what ears could bear this? Therefore that notion is to be held, in these words: [that] she who sells herself to obscenity, and who earns by the abuse of her own body, be πόρνη, and a harlot — just as ἐπίκοινον [epikoinon, “common”] is “a common body [corpus vulgare],” says Athenaeus bk. 13.
To the seventh. “A faithful discourse,” says the Apostle, 1 Tim. 1:15, “and worthy of all acceptance, that CHRIST JESUS came into this world to save sinners.” Which [thing], that he might demonstrate to all, he willed to draw [his] origin from sinners; and [willed] that [this] be recorded by his own scribes [evangelists] thus into the Commentaries [Gospels], so that, of all [the mothers], chiefly [those] should be memorated who had been notable by some stain of turpitude or idolatry — [all] except one [the Virgin], in no way to be silenced. But these are either [women] who were in matrimony, as Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba; or who had been [married], as the widow Thamar, and Ruth; or who neither were nor had been [married], as Rahab — so that to all, if they return to good fruit, hope and pardon in CHRIST JESUS may be set forth. “To be noted,” says St. Jerome on Matthew ch. 1 (where he treats of Thamar): “in the genealogy of the Saviour none of the holy women is taken up, but those whom scripture reprehends — so that he who had come for the sake of sinners, being born of sinners, might delete the sins of all.” And the same hand down St. Ambrose, Chrysostom, [and] Euthymius. Nor does this stand against that other question — [about] the three Kings omitted in the same genealogy, Ochozias [Ahaziah], Joash, and Amasias [Amaziah] — because, as [in] 4 Kings [2 Kings] I note, these are passed over [because they were] from Ahab’s stock, which up to the fourth generation, by Elijah’s prophecy (3 Kings [1 Kings] 21:21), was to be destroyed — enough [reason] they were [omitted]. Nor, again, [is it] disgraceful to Christians [that], in his [Christ’s] lineage, certain such wicked [women] existed — because, on account of the highest utility of the human race (of which a little before), that [stain] too of humility and disgrace was taken up and expiated by the Lord of glory. But from this it is patent how ineptly they do, who daily contrive so many new versions, and render [it] either “a caupona-woman [cauponaria]” or “a merit-woman [meritoria].” Nay, there have now existed, of the crowd of heretics, two who in the very text put both “and a harlot” and “a caupona” at once — Junius and Tremellius, rendering: “They entered into the house of a certain harlot caupona [meretricis cauponae].”