The Oracle of King Lemuel (Proverbs 31:10-31)
Poor, much-maligned wife of the last chapter of Proverbs! Google her and see. After you get through the usual spate of citations from major commentaries, much of what you find is Christians complaining.
What are they complaining about? Well, here goes:
- They’re complaining that the woman in King Lemuel’s acrostic poem is an anachronism. (She isn’t.)
- They’re complaining that the poem should have been about men instead and rewriting it for our benefit. (It wasn’t written about men. Deal with it.)
- They’re complaining that Proverbs 31 is not about a “real woman”, it’s about “wisdom” as a concept. (Possibly true, but irrelevant: if it’s about wisdom as a concept, it’s about how that concept looks when it is worked out in the life of a married woman.)
- They’re complaining that single women (like Ruth before she married Boaz) should be considered “Proverbs 31 women” too. (A single women may be all kinds of wonderful things but the one thing she cannot be is an “excellent wife”, which happens to be the subject matter of this chapter.)
- They’re complaining that the chapter gets used as a checklist by which modern Christian wives are judged by others.
Hmm, that last one may have a grain of truth to it ...
Not a Checklist for Wives
Proverbs 31 is not actually a checklist for wives to use in self evaluations or for church ladies to decide if their peers measure up. Not really. It is written to the king
by his mother, and like much maternal advice, starts personally and practically
(Watch out for the sort of woman who will drain and destroy you,
steer clear of the booze,
speak up for those who don’t have a voice and make sure you
judge righteously).
If the latter part of the chapter is a checklist at all, then one might argue it is a checklist written by one good woman to help a man she loves land another good woman. After all,
good wives are hard to find and “precious”. This particular mother knows women, and has no desire to see her son waste his life on any of the many out there that are less than top notch in character. Ideally, you only get one shot at it. Better make your choice count.
As a mother, wouldn’t you want the same for your son?
Now indirectly, I suppose, any young woman who wants a good husband might find some of the points laid down by King Lemuel’s mother to be of interest. After all, it might give her some idea of the sort of woman a good man who has been given sound advice will be looking for.
Still, the list is not a convenient cudgel for some Christian women to beat other Christian women with. Fair enough?
Not an Anachronism
Further, the chapter is not anachronistic. Sure, the mom in question describes the ideal wife for her son in ways
consistent with her culture and her time, which means stuff like “she puts her
hands to the distaff” and “her husband is known in the gates”; things that may
not have a precise equivalent in our culture.
That does not mean the chapter is obsolete. It simply means that, like we do with other Old Testament lessons, we observe
the character qualities in the excellent wife that give rise to her actions, rather than becoming caught up in how those actions are “not relevant”
to our times.
If the excellent wife “rises while it is yet night”, it is because she is conscientious and responsible. If “her lamp does
not go out at night”, it is because she is industrious. If she
“makes linen garments and sells them”, it is because she is, as we used to say
in job interviews, a “self-starter”.
It is the character quality this excellent wife displays, not the
specific activity she undertakes to show it, that is the important takeaway
here.
The Stuff That Is Applicable
But cultural quibbles should be few
and far between for anyone genuinely interested in learning from the passage
rather than simply trashing it. How hard is it to apply statements like “She
does [her husband] good, and not harm, all the days of her life”? It simply
means that this wife is not a headache for her husband. He does not find
himself obligated to spend his life putting out the fires she has started.
Applied practically, such a woman is characteristically risk-averse, careful
with money, not a gossip, and disinclined to pick fights with other women. In
short, she is not high maintenance.
Or how hard is it to apply “She makes bed coverings for herself”? It tells us that an excellent wife takes care of the
family responsibilities allotted to her without becoming a burden to others.
Whether the “bed coverings” are hand-knit or ordered from Bed Bath & Beyond on sale
is not really the issue. The point is that she takes care of what is needed
without fuss and bother. When the husband comes home, he finds the family home
in order. Husband and wife are free to get on to more important things.
There is little about the qualities of King Lemuel’s ideal wife described here that is hard to understand or apply to
modern life. Unless you want it to be.
Lest We Leave Anyone Out
Rachel Held Evans makes the point that Ruth, who was widowed, is described as possessing the same quality of
being an eshet chayil or a “woman
of valor” as is the wife of Proverbs 31. It is good to be reminded
that all women can benefit from possessing these qualities, even if, as
Evans says:
“Ruth didn’t spend her days making clothes for her husband. She had no husband; she was widowed.
Ruth’s children didn’t rise up and call her blessed. She was childless.
Ruth didn’t spend her days exchanging fine linens with the merchants and keeping an immaculate home.”
It may reasonably be pointed out that Ruth was a wife before she was a widow, and a wife and mother afterward. She gave birth to an ancestor of Messiah. Unless she died young, she spent quite a bit more time married than single. But hey, why quibble?
In any case, the life of the believing single woman is not the subject of Proverbs 31. No one ought to feel
insulted by that. Likewise, those who seek to apply the qualities and duties of
the virtuous wife to men are equally at sea about the passage. There are plenty
of passages in scripture that describe how Christian widows and
Christian men are to conduct themselves. Trying to read them into this passage
is simply a distraction and causes us to risk missing the actual point of
Proverbs 31.
What If You Don’t Want to be a Proverbs 31 Wife?
In short, there is much that is useful and relevant in this chapter. What is NOT useful is the
sort of thing Lauren Oquist has to say about it:
“Maybe you, like me, read this passage and think to yourself well sheesh. Is every woman supposed to try and fit this mold? And how would that be possible if every woman is different? What if she can’t sew or cook or hires a nanny for her kids during the week? What if she never even gets married? Does that mean she’s not living up to her God-given potential as a female? Does that mean she’s living in sin?
And what if you don’t want to be a Proverbs 31 woman?”
As pointed out by everyone including Rachel
Held Evans, Proverbs 31 is about CHARACTER, not about specific ancient
household habits. Because “every woman is different”, the Proverbs 31 woman
admits all sorts of female personalities: the energetic, the outgoing, the
melancholic, the artistic. There is room for great variety.
But there isn’t room in Proverbs 31 for the sort of woman whose behavior might be fairly described by an unbiased third party
as uncharitable, moody, gossipy, indolent, shrewish, hectoring, selfish,
uncaring, insubstantial or occupied with trivia. The Proverbs 31 gal may
be fun-loving or a little uptight, excitable or calm, but she will inevitably
display a large number of character qualities common to all godly Christian
women. That’s just how it is.
The Bottom Line
Ladies, if you don’t want to be a Proverbs 31 woman, nobody is going to make you into one, I can assure you.
If you’re pretty enough and available enough, some halfway decent Christian guy
with his priorities temporarily out of whack will almost surely marry you
anyway. The good news for those of us who don’t particularly want to develop
character is that there are frequently people who will love us despite its
near-total absence, especially in Christian circles. Some of them will even put
up with us for a lifetime.
And young men who are currently dating or engaged, if your intended shows no interest in becoming a Proverbs 31 wife,
take Lemuel’s mom’s advice: Run.
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