Proverbs 31 Commentary

Content Warning

Because the Biblical text overwhelmingly centers male characters in a way that is unsurprising for ancient near-eastern literature, every women’s devotional writer and preacher tasked with a Mother’s Day sermon takes a turn with Proverbs 31.  The result is over-used and over-wrought exegesis.  Unfortunately, far too many women and girls in our churches will show you a Bible study workbook or sermon notes that turn the wisdom of Proverbs 31 into a checklist. We are told, “If you want to be a good girl, a godly woman, wife and mother, attain to this.” And then the “this” is interpreted in ways that make women smaller, more domestic, less influential beyond their household.

I offer this as a friendly and (hopefully) gentle warning: when you announce Proverbs 31 as your sermon text, there will be more than one woman in the congregation who will feel defeated and checked out of the preaching moment before the prayer of illumination concludes with an “amen.”

I don’t say this to discourage you from preaching the text.  It is certainly the case that “all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness.” What I mean to ask you is, “please don’t preach it in a tired way or in a way that contributes to the exhaustion of those who would seek to earn a godliness that is only ever generously given as a gift of the Spirit.  In other words, let this text proclaim Gospel good news, especially to those who doubt that it can.

Marry Wisdom

Last week’s lectionary text came from the beginning of the book of Proverbs. In our commentary, we observed the way the author of Proverbs weaves an elaborate theme throughout the book: the contest of wisdom and folly. Each one is personified in the feminine form according to the gender assigned to that particular noun in the Hebrew language.  So the reader of Proverbs must choose between the woman wisdom or the woman folly.  These choices play out in examples having to do with finances, self-discipline, anger, speech and conduct.  Underneath all these superficial choices is the primary decision: will the reader marry wisdom or folly?

Amy Plantinga Pauw confirms this reading of the text when she observes, “ There are so many literary and thematic parallels between her and the figure of Woman Wisdom in chapters 1– 9”. Additionally, scholar Christine Roy Yoder contends, ““the two women who frame the book essentially coalesce as one.”  The implication of this is that the author of Proverbs primary concern is not with a) women’s godliness or b) a person’s choice of a wife. Unfortunately, many Bible translations obscure this text’s true purpose by offering a heading before verse 10, something like “A good wife,” “a virtuous woman” or “a wife of noble character,”

The result is that we miss how this text enjoins everyone to lean toward wisdom, which is to say being controlled by the Holy Spirit of wisdom instead of allured by the fancy and fleeting baubles of folly.  Over and over again in Scripture, we are told that the Holy Spirit is closely tied to the gift of wisdom.  When Paul prays in Ephesians 1:17, he asks God to give the people “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.” In response to prayer, the Spirit often provides guidance, counsel, understanding and knowledge to God’s people.  The Spirit also often cited as the source of Christian conviction and courage.

So it would be dead wrong to interpret the wisdom personified in Proverbs 31 as somehow weak, passive, domesticated or small.  Rather, it is the fullness of the Spirit’s gifts poured out to make God’s people strong and courageous.

Illustration:

Arguably no one has better resuscitated the mangled overuse of Proverbs 31 the way that Rachel Held Evans did in her 2012 book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  This book recounts the year Evans spent trying on and living out every one of the Bible’s command explicitly directed toward woman.  In January of that year, she focused her attention on Proverbs 31.  As she had been tacitly and explicitly instructed throughout her life, she decided to make this poem into her to-do list.  Getting up before dawn, she made it her mission to do what the woman in this poem does every day and even long into the night. After all the text is clear, “Her lamp does not go out at night.”

After a lifetime of hearing the text the way I warned about at the start of this commentary, Evans glories — nearly crows — over the best translations of the Hebrew phrase “eschet chayil,” which bears no small meaning.  Rather it means something like “valorous woman.” In correspondence with an Orthodox Rabbi’s wife, Rachel learns that this phrase is not an accolade held out for only the most righteous of women according to whatever a particular religious context has deemed righteous for women.  Rather, “Eshet chayil is at its core a blessing — one that was never meant to be earned but to be given, unconditionally.” Once a week, at Sabbath dinner, a head of household will sing the words right there before God, their children and any guests. “”A valorous woman, who can find? Her value is far beyond pearls.”  The Rabbi’s wife goes on to explain, “I get called escheat chayil (a valorous woman) all the time. Make your own challah instead of buying? Eshet chayil! Work to earn some extra money for the family? Eshet chayil! Make balloon animals for the kids at Shul? Eshet chayil! Every week, at the Shabbat table, my husband sings the Proverbs 31 poem to me.  It’s special because I know that no matter what I do or don’t do, he praise me for blessing the family with my energy and creativity.”

And it isn’t just intended between husbands and wives.  Women also encourage one another with this phrase. In this way, Evans is restoring the intention of the text from its recent overuse.  “We abandoned the meaning of the poem by focusing on the specifics, and it became just another impossible standard by which to measure our failures. We turned an anthem into an assignment, a poem into a job description.” In her best attempt to sum up the tradition for a US context in the early 2010s, Rachel Held Evans exclaims, “its like their version of ‘You go girl!’”