Seven Women and the Name of the Bridegroom

Isaiah Was Given for the Last Days

After His Resurrection, Jesus Christ personally commanded the Nephites to search the writings of Isaiah diligently. He declared that Isaiah had spoken concerning the house of Israel and the Gentiles and testified that all the things Isaiah prophesied “have been and shall be” (3 Nephi 23:1–3). Isaiah therefore does more than preserve the history of an ancient covenant people. His prophecies reveal patterns that return as the Lord gathers, judges, purifies, and establishes His people in the last days.

One of those patterns appears at the transition from Isaiah 3 to Isaiah 4. Isaiah first shows Zion corrupted by the order of Babylon and then, immediately afterward, shows women taking hold of one Man and pleading to be called by His name. The sequence is deliberate. Before the covenant people can bear the name of the Bridegroom in holiness, the false order they have accepted must be exposed.

Isaiah 3 Shows Babylon Inside Zion

Isaiah 3 is a covenant lawsuit against a people who still bear the name of Zion while living according to values opposed to the Lord. Pride replaces meekness, display replaces holiness, leaders seek status and power rather than righteousness, justice becomes distorted, and the poor are ground down. The famous description of the ornaments of the daughters of Zion is therefore more than a complaint about clothing. It portrays a people who have learned to seek identity through spectacle, status, wealth, and outward glory rather than through covenant with God.

That condition is Babylon within Zion. A people may preserve scripture, ordinances, religious language, lineage, and outward forms while their actual relationships and desires are still governed by pride, rivalry, exploitation, vanity, selfishness, and the need to be seen. The Lord does not call such things Zion merely because holy names have been placed upon them.

The judgment that follows exposes what the people have trusted. Isaiah says that the Lord removes “the stay and the staff,” the supports upon which they have leaned while refusing to lean fully upon Him. Wisdom and stable judgment disappear, immature leadership rises, social order deteriorates, and the hidden weakness of the people becomes visible (Isaiah 3:1–12).

This shaking is not meaningless destruction. It reveals the heart. The Lord allows false supports to fail so that His people can see what they have trusted and choose whether they will continue in Babylon’s order or return to Him. Against that background, Isaiah declares the covenant choice that follows.

Seven Women Take Hold of One Man

“And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.”
— Isaiah 4:1

The verse can be read only as an arithmetic description of social collapse, but Isaiah’s own prophetic language points beyond arithmetic. Throughout his writings, the covenant community is repeatedly portrayed in feminine terms: the daughter of Zion, Jerusalem as a woman, a forsaken wife restored to her Husband, and a bride over whom the Bridegroom rejoices (Isaiah 52:1–2; 54:5–8; 62:4–5).

Within that larger pattern, the women portray the covenant people turning from Babylon and taking hold of their one covenant Head.

The number seven carries the scriptural sense of fulness and completeness. The image therefore presents a complete covenant people cleaving to one Man. They do not take hold of competing heads, rival kingdoms, or separate sources of identity. They take hold of the One whose name they desire to bear.

Isaiah later identifies that One directly: “Thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 54:5). The Husband of covenant Israel is also her Maker and Redeemer. The bridal relationship is possible because the One to whom the people cleave is first the One who can save them.

“We Will Eat Our Own Bread, and Wear Our Own Apparel”

The women first say, “We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel.” In the ordinary social setting of Isaiah’s language, the statement removes the usual expectation that the man must provide their food and clothing. They approach willing to bear responsibility rather than insisting upon the benefits of marriage while placing every burden upon the husband.

Within the covenant pattern, this becomes an image of willing stewardship. The people who take hold of Christ do not approach Him demanding the privileges of His Kingdom while refusing the labor, sacrifice, obedience, and consecration required in His household. They come willing to work with Him, bear what He assigns, use what He has placed in their hands for His purposes, and become contributors to the welfare of His family rather than consumers of holy things.

That willingness does not mean they save or sustain themselves independently of God. King Benjamin taught that even when people serve God with their whole souls they remain unprofitable servants, because He continually gives them life and immediately blesses obedience again (Mosiah 2:21–24). Everything they possess, including the strength by which they labor, already came from Him.

Their promise is therefore not self-sufficiency before Christ but consecrated responsibility under Christ. They bring the one offering that can truly be theirs to give: a willing heart and mind. They say in effect, “We will bear the stewardship Thou givest us. We will not demand Thy name while refusing Thy work. We desire to belong to Thee and to live faithfully within Thy house.”

“Only Let Us Be Called by Thy Name”

The center of Isaiah’s plea is not the bread or the apparel. The women say, “only let us be called by thy name.” Their greatest desire is covenant identity and belonging.

To bear another’s name in scriptural marriage imagery is to be joined to a household and placed under a covenant head. Isaiah therefore presents a people who no longer seek their identity in the ornaments, status, and outward glory exposed in the preceding chapter. They want the name of the Bridegroom.

This gives greater depth to the repeated gospel covenant of taking upon us the name of Jesus Christ. The name is not merely a denominational label or a verbal profession of Christian belief. It declares to whom the disciple belongs, whose will governs the life, whose character the disciple is learning to bear, and whose household the disciple desires eventually to enter in fulness.

The sacrament renews that willingness when disciples witness that they are willing to take upon them the name of the Son, always remember Him, and keep His commandments (Doctrine and Covenants 20:77). The name received in the gospel then leads into deeper covenant preparation by which the faithful learn to live the laws of His household and become ready for the sealing order through which Zion is welded into Jesus Christ according to the generational order He has appointed.

Isaiah’s women therefore do not merely ask for a title. They ask for a relationship of covenant belonging.

“To Take Away Our Reproach”

The women also explain why they need the Man whose name they seek: “to take away our reproach.” In Isaiah’s world, reproach could include shame, abandonment, widowhood, barrenness, vulnerability, and the humiliation of a people under judgment. Within the fulness of the gospel, the image reaches even deeper into the fallen condition that separates humanity from God.

Sin brings reproach that human effort cannot finally remove. No amount of outward respectability, religious reputation, wealth, accomplishment, or social belonging can cleanse the conscience or restore what has been lost through the Fall. Only Jesus Christ can forgive sin, redeem from death, sanctify the heart, and restore covenant belonging before the Father.

This is why Isaiah joins Husband and Redeemer in the same declaration. Christ does not become the covenant Husband of a people because they arrive already pure enough to deserve Him. He gives Himself to redeem them, covers what they cannot repair, washes what they cannot cleanse, and then teaches them to live in the holiness of the relationship He has made possible.

The bridal doctrine therefore does not diminish the Atonement by replacing redemption with marriage imagery. It reveals what redemption is preparing. Christ removes the reproach of His people so that those who were alienated can become holy, bear His name, and live with Him in covenant union.

The Bridegroom Gives a New Identity

The contrast between Isaiah 3 and Isaiah 4 is therefore a contrast between two sources of identity. Babylon teaches people to establish worth through appearance, possession, comparison, power, status, recognition, and control. The Lord strips those supports away because none of them can make a person holy or create Zion.

The purified people instead say, “Let us be called by thy name.” They are willing to release identities that compete with Christ because belonging to Him has become more valuable than the ornaments of Babylon. Their glory is no longer what they can display before one another but the holiness He creates within them.

This is also why the law of consecration belongs to the bridal order. Consecration is not merely an economic arrangement. It is the outward expression of a deeper truth: the life belongs to Christ. Time, strength, relationships, possessions, labor, gifts, and opportunities are no longer treated as instruments for building a separate kingdom of self. They become stewardships held under the Bridegroom whose name the disciple has chosen to bear.

The Escaped of Israel Are Called Holy

Isaiah continues by describing what remains after the cleansing. The Branch of the Lord becomes beautiful and glorious, and “he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy,” even everyone written among the living in Jerusalem (Isaiah 4:2–3). The Lord washes away the filth of the daughters of Zion and purges the blood of Jerusalem by the spirit of judgment and burning (Isaiah 4:4).

The “escaped of Israel” are therefore more than people who happened to survive calamity. They are the remnant that has passed through exposure and purification and chosen the Lord instead of Babylon. What Isaiah 3 showed as corrupted Zion is being transformed into a people who can actually be called holy.

The movement across these chapters is covenantal. Babylon is exposed, false supports are removed, the people take hold of their one Head, they desire His name, He removes their reproach, and the remnant is purified for Zion. Isaiah is showing the same latter-day work described elsewhere in scripture through different imagery: Christ gathers a people out of the nations, cleanses them, gives them His name, and prepares them to belong to Him.

Isaiah’s Women and the Virgins Await the Same Bridegroom

Isaiah’s seven women and Christ’s ten virgins illuminate one another without being identical parables. Isaiah emphasizes a people coming out of Babylon, taking hold of one Man, seeking His name, and asking Him to remove their reproach. Matthew emphasizes invited people waiting through a delay, carrying lamps, hearing the midnight cry, and being proved ready or unready when the Bridegroom comes.

Both images place the covenant people in a bridal relationship to Jesus Christ. Both require more than outward religious identity. Both point toward purification, fidelity, and preparation before the final union, and both make the Bridegroom Himself the center of the people’s hope.

The question raised by Isaiah is therefore not merely what happened to seven women in an ancient social crisis. It is whether the covenant people of the last days will leave Babylon’s order, take hold of Jesus Christ, receive His name as their true identity, allow Him to remove their reproach, and become the holy people He can receive as His own.