Go ye into the streets and byways of Jerusalem, and see if ye can find a man

The expression Go ye into the streets and byways of Jerusalem, and see if ye can find a man gives biblical form to Connie Chatterley’s search for a possible father for her child. In her private reckoning, the abundance of male acquaintances does not mean that she has found a man suitable for that responsibility. The phrase distinguishes an ordinary sexual partner from someone she considers fit to father another generation, making the choice a serious personal matter rather than a casual extension of romance.

Connie’s standard for fatherhood

Connie considers the men around her and rejects them as prospective fathers, even where she can imagine them as lovers. Tommy Dukes, for instance, seems to her to end in himself rather than suggest a future generation. She imagines that the man she seeks may be a real foreigner, and postpones any decision: she expects first to take Clifford Chatterley to London and later abroad, allowing time to sift her possibilities. The biblical summons names the test she has set herself. She will not entrust the child to a chance acquaintance, and she regards the choice as a private concern on which she is serious to the bottom of her soul.

Scripture redirected toward embodied life

The expression draws on a prophetic challenge about finding a man in Jerusalem, but Connie turns it into a question of intimate selection and procreation. That movement accords with the novel’s wider use of biblical language: religious phrases are carried into bodily experience rather than reserved for abstract doctrine. Later, Oliver Mellors playfully adapts a line from the Psalms during an intimate encounter, while the lovers’ tenderness toward Connie’s pregnancy gives their physical relationship a prospective, generative meaning. The expression therefore belongs to a pattern in which sacred language is neither simply discarded nor left unchanged; it is tested against human feeling and the responsibilities of shared life.

From a private search to a shared future

Connie initially treats the identity of a suitable father as distinct from the question of love: a man might be personally disliked and still, in principle, meet the test. The later relationship with Mellors gives the search a different emotional setting. As they face separation, he describes their bond as a small flame to be protected against money, social hostility, and an uncertain future; he also acknowledges the child Connie is carrying by him. The expression’s original emphasis on finding a man thus resonates with the novel’s later concern not only with fatherhood, but with whether tenderness between two people can endure and support a life together.