The Captive Woman

Si, inquit, exieris ad bellum contra inimicos tuos et videris mulierem decora specie, et concupieris eam, rades omnes pilos capitis ejus, et ungulas ejus, et indues eam vestimentis lugubribus, et sedebit in domo, lugens patrem suum et matrem suam et domum paternam, et post triginta dies erit tibi uxor. Docant ergo Judaei quomodo apud eos ista serventur, quid causae, quid rationis est decalvare mulierem, et ungulas ejus abscindi? Verbi causa, ponamus quod ita invenerit eam is qui dicitur invenisse, ut neque capillos, neque ungulas habeat, quid habuit, quod secundum legem demere videretur? Nos vero, quibus militia spiritualis est, et arma non carnalia, sed potentia Deo, si decoram mulierem, id est, animam, quae a Deo pulchra creata est, in gentili conversatione invenerimus, et sociare voluerimus eam corpori Christi, deposito idololatriae cultu, induitur lugubribus poenitentiae indumentis, et deplorat patrem, et matrem, hoc est, omnem memoriam mundi, ejusque illecebras. Deinde verbi Dei novacula et doctrina omne peccatum infideliatis ejus, quod mortuum est et inane, abraditur; hoc enim sunt capilli capitis et ungulae mulieris. Atque ita demum salutaris lavacri unda purificata conjungitur sanctis Dei, scilicet, cum jam nihil in capite mortuum, nihil in manibus ex illis quae per infidelitatem mortua dicuntur habuerit, ut neque sensibus, neque actibus immundum aliquid aut mortuum gerat. Quod vero post triginta dies jubet eam duci uxorem, feminae quippe sanguinus purgationem post mensem habere solent. Post purgationem ergo peccatorum, anima jam effecta munda et purgata ab immunditia sua sociatur viro Israelitae, corpori scilicet Christi. Sanctus Isidorus Hispalensis,Mysticorum Expositiones Sacramentorum Seu Quaestiones In Vetus Testamentum, In Deuteronomium, Caput XVIII Migne PL 83.362-363

If you go out to war against your enemies and you see a beautiful woman and you desire her, cut off all the hair of her head, and her nails, and clothe her in vestments of mourning and sit her in your house, grieving for her father and mother and her paternal home, and after thirty days she shall be your wife. 1 So the Hebrews teach how this woman should be treated by them, but for what cause, what reason is a woman shaved and her nails cut off? What means this passage that we may understand how it may be found that it is said that neither hair nor nails she should have, which she did have, and that seem pleasing to the law? We truly to whom warfare is spiritual, and arms not carnal but the virtue of God, if a woman is fair, have the soul, which by God is created beautiful, and if we should find it among the Gentiles and we should wish to associate it with the body of Christ, stripping away the worship of idols, we should clothe it with the grieving garments of penitence and so let it lament its father and mother, that is, all its memory of the world and its allures. Then with the razor of the word of God and His teaching every sin of of its unfaithfulness, which is dead and useless, is shaved off, that which is the hair and nails of the woman. And so at last washed, with the laver of salvation it is purified to be joined with the holy ones of God, that is, when now nothing on the head is dead, nor in the hands, which through unfaithfulness are said to be dead, that neither thoughts nor deeds bear uncleanliness, nor death. And that truly after thirty days he is commanded to make her his wife is because women are accustomed after a month to have their purgation of blood, and therefore after the purgation of sin, the soul now clean from its uncleanliness, may be joined to a man of Israel, which means to the body of Christ. Saint Isidore of Seville, Expositions of Sacred Mysteries or Questions on the Old Testament, On Deuteronomy, Chap 18 1 Deut 21. 10-13