In Deuteronomy 21:10ff., God gave His people this commandment: “If you see a beautiful woman among the captives and you want to take her as your wife, bring her into your house, let her hair be shaven and her nails trimmed, and her clothes in which she was taken captive laid aside, and let her sit in your house and mourn her father and her mother for one month. Then sleep with her and marry her and let her be your wife.”

Along with the fact that the Lord God wanted to use these various ceremonies in order to prevent the Israelites from entering into marriage with foreigners and idol worshipers lightly, there is an excellent type, or rather, an allegory presented to us in this ceremonial law. For the captive foreign woman stands for the soul of a sinner, which is a “foreigner and outside of the city and people of God” (Eph. 2:12). It is also captive in the kingdom of the devil (Col. 1:13). If she (that is, the soul) figuratively becomes pledged in marriage to Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom, then she must first allow herself to be washed and purified by true repentance.

She must “lay aside her clothing in which she was taken captive,” that is, she must “take off the old man” (Eph. 4:22) and “despise the stained garment of the flesh” (Jude 23).

She must “let her hair and nails be trimmed”; that is, she must lay aside the evil lusts of the flesh, especially haughtiness and greed, which are understood by the hair and nails, and she must undergo a spiritual circumcision of the heart (Deu. 30:6).  (Sermon for Mary Magdalene-July 22, Postilla Volume 3 by Johann Gerhard consisting of 15 sermons for Saints Days and other festivals, Repristination Press, page 106)

The Church, the bride of Christ, is black without (Cant. i. 5), because of her afflictions and persecutions; but within she is comely and beautiful, because she enjoys the consolations of the divine Spirit. The Church is as a garden enclosed (Cant. iv. 12), and so is every faithful soul, since no one knows its beauty unless he is within it. And never shall we know fully and perfectly the consolations of the Spirit of God, unless the power of the flesh over us is destroyed by affliction. If the love of the world fills our hearts, then the love of God can find no entrance therein. A vessel already full cannot be filled with some new liquid unless it be first emptied. Let us therefore empty our hearts of the love of the world, that we may fill them with the love of God. So God, in sending the cross, seeks to destroy the love of the world in us, that the divine love may find place in our heart. The cross, moreover, leads us to prayer, and becomes the occasion for the exercise in us of Christian virtues. When the north wind blows upon the garden, its spices flow out (Cant. iv. 16), and when persecutions sweep over the Church then are developed those peculiar graces and virtues which are so pleasing to God. The beloved Bridegroom of the soul is white and ruddy (Cant. v. 10); white in His holy innocence, ruddy in the blood-marks of His passion; and that the beloved bride of Christ may be made pure and white in her virtues, she is made ruddy by her sufferings for His name’s sake.

From the hardest stone of our afflictions divine grace can bring forth oil and honey, and from the bitter root of present suffering the sweetest fruit of eternal glory.

And to this eternal glory, O Lord Jesus, lead us on and on, and to its blissful enjoyment finally bring us! Amen. (Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations – XLI: The Principle of Christian Patience, Repristination Press, p. 240-241)