Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
—JAMES 1:27
As in modern times, women in the ancient world tended to outlive their husbands, especially in times of war. While women of high rank occasionally received financial settlements from their husbands’ estates, most became the responsibility of a son, a father-in-law, or a brother-in-law. When the financial burden of another woman in the household was too much for her family to bear, or when no such relations existed, a widow would often slip into poverty. Some became wards of the temple complex, working alongside elderly slave women at menial tasks. Others begged. Still others sold themselves or their children into debt slavery, or succumbed to the lifestyle of a prostitute in order to survive.
In a patriarchal culture, a woman without the financial and physical protection of a man was especially vulnerable to violence and exploitation, so the Mosaic Law consistently demands their protection, often grouping widows with other vulnerable members of society—particularly orphans and aliens. “The fatherless, widows, and foreigners,” John F. Alexander observed, “each have about forty verses that command justice for them.”23 Israel’s neglect of the rights of orphans and widows was a chief concern of the Old Testament prophets, and Jesus himself issued a scathing indictment of first-century religious leaders who “devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers” (Mark 12:40).
Members of the early church sought to rectify such abuses, so widows flocked to Christianity en masse, so much so that the pagan Celsus criticized Christianity as a pathetic religion of slaves, women, and children.24 Large portions of the Pastoral Epistles concern themselves with the mounting logistical challenges of caring for so many Christian widows, and the Roman bishop Cornelius noted that by AD 253, the church in Rome supported fifteen hundred of them.
A stalwart force in the first-century effort to restore the dignity of widows was a woman named Tabitha.25 Likely a widow herself, but with means, Tabitha lived in the port city of Joppa at the time when Peter and Paul were busy spreading the gospel throughout Asia Minor. She was a renowned philanthropist, known throughout the land for “always doing good and helping the poor” (Acts 9:36). She was also a master seamstress, making robes and other clothing for the many widows in her care, presumably imparting on them the skills of the trade.
The biblical story of Tabitha begins with her death.
When first we hear of her in Luke’s book of Acts, she has succumbed to an illness, her body washed and prepared for burial. So critical was Tabitha’s ministry to the early church that Peter himself was summoned to her bedside, and when he arrived, he found widows from all across Joppa weeping together in Tabitha’s home. They showed him all the clothes she had made for them.
Peter sent everyone out of the room and fell on his knees to pray. Apparently, God agreed that Tabitha was indeed indispensable, for Peter turned toward the body and said, “Tabitha, get up” (V. 40).
Tabitha opened her eyes and sat up. Peter took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the widows, who ran into the room to find Tabitha alive. It is one of just two resurrection stories in the book of Acts.
To Tabitha belongs the worthy distinction of being the only woman in the New Testament identified with the feminine form of the word “disciple”—mathetria. The word literally means “pupil,” or “apprentice,” which may suggest that at some point, Tabitha studied directly under Jesus. Regardless, she must have embodied what Jesus had in mind when he told his followers to make “disciples of every nation” (Matthew 28:19), particularly in her love for those whom her Teacher called “the least of these” (25:45).