Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Proverbs · About this commentary
A Worthy Woman, From Aleph to Tav
Proverbs 31:10-31
10 Who can find a worthy woman? For her value is far above rubies. · WEB
The book ends with an alphabet, and the woman it spells out is the wisdom of chapters 1 to 9 living in a household.
The poem is an acrostic. Twenty-two verses, each beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, from the first to the last. The form is invisible in translation and it governs the reading: a complete alphabet is a way of saying the subject has been covered from one end to the other, with nothing left out.
What the alphabet spells is a working life. She seeks wool and flax and works eagerly with her hands. She is like the merchant ships, bringing her bread from afar. She rises while it is still night to feed the household and the servant girls. She considers a field, and buys it — assessment then purchase, out of her own earnings — and plants a vineyard with the profit. She makes linen garments and sells them, and delivers sashes to the merchant. Her lamp does not go out at night.
The range of that is worth stating plainly. Textile production, import, agriculture, land acquisition, viticulture, manufacture and wholesale trade, alongside the feeding and clothing of a household. Nothing in the poem is domestic in the narrow sense, and nothing in it is idle. The one thing said about her leisure is that she doesn't eat the bread of idleness.
But the poem is not a list of achievements. Three verses locate her character rather than her output. She opens her arms to the poor; yes, she extends her hands to the needy. Strength and dignity are her clothing. She laughs at the time to come. And She opens her mouth with wisdom. Kind instruction is on her tongue — the same two things Lemuel's mother was doing in the verses just above, and the same opening of the mouth.
That laugh is the best line in the book. The future is what everything in Proverbs has been preparing for — the harvest, the reserves, the discipline, the reputation — and she is not braced against it. She finds it funny.
The last two verses set the accounting straight. Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman who fears Yahweh, she shall be praised. The motto of the book, restated in its final lines and applied to a person rather than to a principle. And then the close, which asks for nothing except what she has already earned: Give her of the fruit of her hands! Let her works praise her in the gates! The gates are where her husband sits among the elders, and where a reputation is made. She is not to be praised there by him or by anybody else. Her work is to do the praising, and the book ends by asking that it be allowed to.
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