Proverbs 31

That’s a blog post title that I suspect makes women everywhere groan. But, I did actually work my way through Proverbs in May as it was preached at my church, and felt like I came out the end of it with a new perspective on Proverbs 31. I know the author of this particular chapter is unknown and not considered that of the rest of the book, but Proverbs 31 is well placed at the end of it. As you read through the Proverbs as a whole, over and over you find proverbs about diligence, about not being an idle “sluggard”, about making adequate preparations for the future (but all the while acknowledging that it’s God who brings them about), about the appropriate use of words, and about wisdom as the fear of the Lord.

Then you get to the end and find there an acrostic poem, which reads very much as a summary of what has come before, only in particular application to women.

And, also, as with the rest of the book, it holds up an ideal, and isn’t all to be applied literally and fully to any one individual (eg “her lamp does not go out at night” and “she rises while it is yet night”, which would mean never sleeping – and there's no argument here for rising early in the morning over staying up late at night, because this woman does both!).

The ESV study notes were quite helpful on this:

... the woman embodies in all areas of life the full character of wisdom commended throughout this book. This shows that even though the concrete situations up to now have generally envisioned a cast of males, the teaching of the entire book is intended for all of God's people ... Second, as with other character types [eg the “righteous person” of the rest of the book], this profile is an ideal: a particular example of full-scale virtue and wisdom toward which the faithful are willing to be molded ... It is not expected that any one woman will look exactly like this in every respect.

And as the book of Proverbs begins with “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (1:7), so it ends with “a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised”. Here is wisdom for women.

Rather than seeing it as an isolated prototype or list of instructions for what an excellent woman will look like, connecting it to the rest of the book in such a way made a lot more sense of this chapter for me (and we can all now sleep at night!).