Proverbs 31:10-31
with Tony W. Cartledge Sept. 23, 2012
A Woman Beyond Belief
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uperwoman: Is there a better word to describe what is expected of many women today? It’s now more customary than not for a woman to work outside the home, yet surveys show that the burden of housekeeping and childcare still falls mainly to her. Who can live up to the expectations of being a sharp businesswoman, a terrific parent, a perfect wife and an effective housekeeper? Proverbs 31:2031 describes just such a woman, a woman who seems too good to be true. Could any mortal woman really be and do all the things attributed to “the ideal wife” in this text, or should this paean to virtuous womanhood be understood as another description of wisdom personified, this time in the form of the consummate spouse? A mother’s advice (vv. 1-9) Proverbs 31 is attributed to a king named Lemuel, who passed it on as lessons his mother taught him. This is a surprise, because the Bible never speaks of any Hebrew king named Lemuel. An old Jewish tradition holds that Lemuel was an alternate name for Solomon, which would mean the advice originated with Bathsheba, but there is no real evidence to support the claim. An alternate translation could be “The sayings of Lemuel, king of Massa, which his mother taught him.” Massa may have been a small kingdom in northern Arabia. This may suggest that the author borrowed from non-Israelite traditions, giving credit to the source. Additional background information online where you see the “Digging Deeper” icon
In either case, we note that the originator of this teaching is not the king’s father or a male teacher, but a woman – his mother. This is also the only biblical example of instructions being given directly to a king, although it was quite common in Mesopotamia for wisdom texts to address the king directly. Many scholars have noted that Proverbs 1 and 31 contain many similar themes, and both feature a strong woman who personifies wisdom. As such, they frame the teachings between and give us cause to wonder how much of the wisdom in Proverbs originated with women. The queen mother urges her son to avoid losing himself in either women or in wine, lest his judgment should become cloudy and he should be distracted from upholding justice and defending the rights of the poor, which are his main functions (vv. 3-9). While this may end the advice directly attributed to Lemuel’s mother, there is no indication of another speaker before the closing poem about the ideal wife. Thus, the reader is led to consider that
this final bit of instruction came from a woman, too. A heroic wife (vv. 10-27) The poem describing the “capable wife” or “ideal woman” is carefully structured on a number of levels. Most obviously – at least to Hebrew readers – it is an acrostic. The poem contains 22 lines, and each line begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in alphabetical order from ’alef (v. 10) to tau (v. 31). Further, the composition – like the poem about Lady Wisdom in 1:23-30 – can be analyzed as a chiasm, with two mirrored descriptions surrounding a central thought. In this case, the central thought is how the woman’s tireless labors and eminent wisdom honor her husband. While a surface reading might lead one to assume the poem is simply a model pattern for an idealized wife, there is more to it. No woman could actually be expected to live up to this woman’s accomplishments. She appears to work both day and night. She takes
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