Caitlin Montgomery Hubler

I. Translation and Notes

II. Outline

This poem begins with a strong exhortation of a valiant woman as elusive, rare, and extremely valuable. This theme is repeated at the end, where she is praised by her children, her husband, and her community. Most of the poem’s content, however, lies in the middle, in which the woman’s activities and her character are explored. After the initial exhortation, the poem discusses the woman’s manifold talents: providing food and clothes for her family, making profitable business decisions, acting generously towards the poor, etc. There is no obvious order to this list, but immediately following it are explanations of the woman’s character based off of such activities. Because of these skills, she has no fear for the future and is able to freely offer herself and her gifts to her family.

Thus, the flow of the text suggests there is a way in which the woman’s activities shape her so she can be in a place of freedom and self-giving love with respect to her family. Something about the nature of the activities in which she partakes makes her fit to be called a “valiant woman.” The above outline draws attention to this by drawing out the link between her activities and the place she occupies in her home as a result of having engaged in them.

III. Poetic Features

Proverbs 31:10-31 is one of several acrostic poems found in the Old Testament. Each of its verses begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with א and ending with ת. Dr. Christine Yoder suggests this poem should therefore be taken as an exhaustive “A to Z description” of a valiant woman.⁶ This may explain why the woman’s activities did not appear to have an obvious order to them —perhaps the nature of the poetic form dictated the order of the content. The genre that best describes this acrostic is “heroic poetry.”⁷ Typically, heroic poetry describes the military exploits of an aristocratic male. However, Proverbs 31:10-31 shares several key structural elements with Hebrew heroic poetry. First, these poems directly relate actions done by the hero rather than focus on inner feelings of physical appearance.⁸ Secondly, they employ militaristic imagery. Besides the fact that חָ֫יִל is generally a militaristic term, the woman’s strength is referred to several times throughout the poem.⁹ Thirdly, the main character belongs to the upper class. The woman described is clearly of royal descent, evinced by her wearing of purple robes and fine linen.¹⁰ She enjoys command over maidservants and has enough resources to develop her own vineyard.¹¹ Thus, the fact this genre is used to describe this woman makes an implicit statement about the value of typically understated “woman’s work” in the household and economy.

Another possible function of the acrostic would have been to make the poem easier to memorize for purposes of recitation. In fact, this is how the acrostic actually came to be used in Jewish communities. Every Shabbat, a husband would sing this poem to his wife as a part of the evening ritual.¹² This tradition continues to the present day. Thus, Proverbs 31:10-31 can be understood as both encouragement to seek the archetypal godly wife and as a song of praise a husband uses to praise such a wife when one has been found.

IV. Literary Context

Proverbs 31 is a chapter of advice delivered to King Lemuel from his royal mother. Proverbs 31:1-9 outlines her warnings against “giving strength to women” and drinking wine.¹³ She further cautions him to defend those who are poor and needy.¹⁴ The opening of the chapter, therefore, forms the backdrop against which Proverbs 31:10-31 may be read: as practical advice related to the acquisition of a wife. Just as following his mother’s instruction to avoid drink and promiscuous women will preserve his identity as king, King Lemuel is encouraged to find a wife who will, by her character and valor, “match” his position as king.

Proverbs 31:10-31 also functions as a conclusion to the entire book of Proverbs, a book principally concerned with the acquisition of wisdom and the avoidance of folly. This conclusion forms an interesting contrast with the first nine chapters of Proverbs, which are devoted to explaining wisdom personified as a woman — referred to in scholarship as “Woman Wisdom.” Shared vocabulary and themes indicate the Valiant Woman in Proverbs 31 should be read alongside the profile of Woman Wisdom.¹⁵ I take the position of those who believe the two women “essentially coalesce.”¹⁶ Both women are rare, oversee young women, provide food, bestow honor on their companions, possess physical strength, extend their hands to the needy, laugh, and have identities associated with the “fear of the LORD.”¹⁷

That the Valiant Woman and Woman Wisdom both flank the content of the book of Proverbs draws attention to the differing ways in which each encourages wisdom to be accessed. In the beginning, a young son meets Woman Wisdom in the city streets. Now that the boy has grown, he encounters wisdom yet again —the difference being this time, he is her husband. The instruction he has gleaned throughout Proverbs put him in a new, more privileged position with respect to Wisdom and her benefits. King Lemuel’s mother wants to bring all this instruction to a practical closing: to encourage him to find a woman who embodies the Woman Wisdom. Perhaps it is her embodiment that will ensure a successful reign for King Lemuel.

At the same time, the quest for wisdom is necessarily ongoing. The structural composition of Proverbs as a whole is a testament to its content: at the end of a book of instruction to a young man who has grown into a King, there is yet more instruction about how to attain wisdom. Thus, the quest for wisdom is ongoing and cannot be exhausted even by the years spent in its pursuit.

V. Exegetical Focus

Proverbs 31:10-31 invites the reader to consider the rare reality of the human embodiment of Woman Wisdom: a valorous, capable woman whose diverse set of skills make her an irreplaceable, praiseworthy, and heroic unit in both family and society.

VI. Feminist Criticism

 Careful use of feminist criticism can yield further insight into possible interpretations of Proverbs 31:10-31. This form of post-analytical criticism, birthed in the 1970s following the women’s movement, takes seriously the reality biblical texts were written during patriarchal times and often without women in mind.¹⁸ In so doing, it attempts to counteract misogynistic interpretations of certain passages. Methodologically speaking, feminist criticism “moves women from the margins to the center of analysis in order to show alternatives to patriarchal and androcentric forms of thought and organization.”¹⁹ Proverbs 31:10-31 is unlike many biblical texts selected for feminist criticism in that this passage does in fact have a woman as its main character. Nevertheless, feminist criticism can still be of assistance by way of highlighting problematic ways various communities have received this poem.

Importantly, my approach differs from certain feminist biblical critics who believe the biblical text itself is in need of revision or rejection altogether.²⁰ While there have been undoubtedly damaging interpretations of this and other passages that have greatly injured women, I do not see anything inherently misogynistic in this passage. In my particular application of feminist criticism to the poem of the Valiant Woman, then, I will examine how this text has been received in conservative evangelical communities in ways that have hurt women with the goal of redeeming the original message of the passage. When stripped of interpretive bias and examined in light of its own cultural context, I believe Proverbs 31:10-31 is good news for women.

Contemporary conservative evangelical communities tend to place a great deal of emphasis on Proverbs 31 in their women’s ministries. Entire programs are set forth in order to encourage the development of “Proverbs 31 women,” typically meant to help women discover the ways in which they can improve themselves as creative and resourceful homemakers, caring mothers, and doting wives. Men, on the other hand, look at the passage as a checklist of qualities any future wife must meet. The result is an unhealthy amount of pressure on women to fit a specific profile of success, dangerously forcing some to fit into an artificial mode that ignores or devalues other parts of their identity.

Undoubtedly, much of this has a basis in the actual text. The Valiant Woman of Proverbs 31 is certainly a wonderful homemaker, mother, and wife. But trouble arises when interpreters ignore the vast cultural gulf that exists between 5^th-century B.C.E. Persia and 21^st-century American suburbia and simply “cut-and-paste” meaning from one culture to another. As Old Testament scholar John Walton says, it is not enough for biblical interpreters to translate language — culture must be translated as well.²¹ This means taking seriously the world in which the author of Proverbs wrote and the fact his words were received and applied in that cultural location first.

The poem was most likely composed in the period after the Babylonian exile during which important shifts in social structure greatly affected the place of the home in the formation of Israelite religious and cultural identity.²² Because the “outward” signs of Israelite identity — the “great national centers of government and religion” — had collapsed, the home became the new, most important social and religious institution.²³ In the absence of previous regulators, the home was the central place for economic activity, where goods were produced. In the 6^th century B.C.E., the home played a similar role as does the marketplace in 21^st-century America. Much like modern companies, these households were largely economic institutions in which every member worked to ensure the wellbeing of the entire unit. Members were not restricted to those related by blood and marriage, but rather included marginal people, whether they be slaves, servants, concubines, or day laborers.²⁴ As a result, these households were “largely self-sufficient in the producing of shelter, food, and raw materials for clothing and pottery.”²⁵ If there arose an excess in productivity, it would result in “cottage industries and a barter and even more expanded trade system by which needed products, such as food and pottery, but also luxury items could be obtained.”²⁶

The Valiant Woman, then, symbolizes someone who has mastered the art of flourishing in what, in her context, was the primary sphere of influence. The problem, then, arises when the interpreter assumed the particular practices which made a woman חָ֫יִל the 6^th century Persia B.C.E. are the same practices that make her worthy of that title today. Indeed, it is clear from even this cursory historical study such domestic skills symbolized something far different in the past than they do today. Contemporary 21^st-century American society does not have a household-based economy but a market economy. As a result, influence in the marketplace is thus set as the ideal to measure one’s power and agency economically and often socially as well. For better or worse, household work is simply taken to mean something different in contemporary times because it plays a different role in the overall scheme of culture and identity making.

The Valiant Woman is essentially someone who takes initiative to do important things. “She is not a pampered lady cared for by servants but instead engages in her own acts of labor and industry.”²⁷ Without translating culture, one might be at risk of saying the key message of the Valiant Woman is every woman ought to learn how to sew purple linen. However, when one is able to see the larger picture of the role this work played in ancient post-exilic Israel, the central idea becomes something much more culturally transcendent: to praise women who excel in roles of societal influence.

This widens rather than narrows the interpretive lens: certainly, stay-at-home moms with wonderful crafting skills could be considered Valiant Women today. However, interpreting culture as well as language allows for interpretations in which a CEO who has never cooked a day in her life can be equally praised for her status as a Valiant Woman. If one were to construct a modern-day portrait of a Valiant Woman based upon the same ethic of Proverbs 31, one might arrive at any number of different descriptions: “she directs her company without fear for the future, for she has carefully considered its budget,” “she teaches herself how to play guitar so she can entertain her friends,” or “she reads well into the night, for she wants to prepare well for her presentation.” Once that extra interpretive step is taken, this text is free to be what it is: a song of appreciation for the many ways in which women use their initiative and talents to better the world.

It bears repeating the main way in which this text has been used in Judaism is men singing the text to their wives in adoration on a regular basis. Throughout history, men have not used this passage as a checklist for wife-shopping, but as language to praise what their wives already do. It was never intended to be an impossible standard women must struggle to live up to generation after generation. Rather, it is an invitation for women to step back from their busy lives, relax, and allow themselves to be praised for the Valiant Women they are.

Endnotes