Many writers focus here on what they consider to be the moral failings of the woman making her out to be an immoral loose woman but this reads into the text what is not there. In reality, the focus is on the failure of the men in her life. We are simply not told how she came to lose her husbands; was she divorced or was she widowed? In view of social practices in ancient Samaria, it is not unlikely that the woman was married more than once to men very much her senior in which case she could well...
