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Proverbs 31: Mission Impossible?

  • Writer: RMB
    RMB
  • Apr 24
  • 5 min read

Maybe you’ve had the experience: it’s Mother’s Day, or your birthday, and your husband is leading devotions after the meal.


“Hmm… What passage to turn to on a day like this, a day all about Mom? Yep, I guess it’s Proverbs 31 again!”


There it comes, that passage all about this female super-hero from ancient Israel. Buying real estate, sewing clothes, providing alms to the poor, giving the car an oil change—what is there that she cannot do?!


This lady intimidates us because of the sheer number of her daily tasks. This is no ordinary woman. Who can ever compare with her? What started as a well-meant Bible reading has fallen flat, maybe induced a guilt trip.


So is it a mission impossible, best not to be attempted? Or can you escape this chapter by saying it’s all out-of-date and doesn’t reflect today’s reality? We can do better than that because it’s part of God-inspired Scripture that He has given for us. But how can we get into this chapter and start to draw out its truth for today? As we start our journey, let’s look at a few signposts.


1) It’s not a list of rules.


A danger in reading or trying to explain Proverbs 31 is that it comes across as a lot of domestic rules. That by verse 31 you’d conclude: “So I guess I’ve got to do more of this, and I have to get a whole lot better at that.” But if that’s all we hear from this chapter, then we’re getting the wrong message.


We need direction, of course. But flourishing as a Christian will never result from what we do. Our life in its entirety and its wholeness springs from the wondrous works of God and his Son, our Saviour. That’s the theme of Scripture from its beginning to its end. So we know that’s also true for Proverbs 31. This isn’t an excellent woman with five-step plans for everything.

She has a secret, and it’s found in her relationship with God.

I don’t want to give away my main point too soon, but look at verse 30, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” There’s the key: a life tilted in everything towards God. Like Proverbs tells us, you find wisdom and meaning through the fear of God. If you want to go forward with understanding—in whatever you do—then you first have to walk closely with God.


That makes it a worthy aspiration, to be a “woman of wisdom.” Our satisfaction, our fulfillment, and our peace come from fearing God, being in fellowship with the Father through his Son, living for him. So it’s not rules, but relationship.


2) It’s an old passage.


Selecting flax and wool, holding distaff and spindle, your husband at the town gate—parts of this portrait are old-fashioned, if not downright foreign. For it’s about an ancient rural community in the Middle East. A woman in a 21st century North American culture will be involved with a very different set of duties: maybe taking courses at college, chauffeuring around town in the minivan, volunteering at the school, helping the kids with their science projects, doing payroll for the family business. A Christian woman might be busy in a multitude of different ways than what’s described in Proverbs 31.


But here’s what remains: this is a godly woman, adorning her life with good works. And that should be true whether you’re married or not, or you have many children or none, or your kids have married and left the house. Even then, the never-outdated question is this: whether we put our whole being into living for the LORD? This portrait is meant to encourage us, to give us a vision of different way to live. So it’s an old passage, but it lives on.


3) So where are the men?


I think everyone knows the verses in Proverbs about difficult women, like 21:9, “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.” So people ask sometimes, “Where are the men? Why does this chapter throw a revealing spotlight on the ladies, while the men are let off easy?”


So far I haven’t found a verse about climbing onto the roof to avoid a grumpy husband. But just think of everything Proverbs says about the foolish man: a man who is impulsive, a man who is proud, lazy and greedy, easily angered, and so on. These verses are convicting to any man and husband. How do men measure up to God’s standard, in our integrity, our labours, and most fundamentally, in our fear of the LORD? This chapter is just one part of a long book that addresses all of God’s people: men, women, and children; rulers and servants; wealthy and poor.


A really interesting thing is how this passage gets introduced. Look at verse 1, “The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him.” Lemuel’s mom wanted to teach her son about what kind of woman is an excellent woman. So it’s been said that Proverbs 31 has a double audience: men and women. It’s about “what wives women should make, and what wives the men should take.” That might not be your life situation. But this is wisdom for all of us to listen to.


4) We should let it sink in.


Proverbs is always one of people’s favourite Bible books. It’s practical, it’s wise, and memorable. But there’s just one problem: there’s just too much in here! It’s 31 chapters filled to the brim with holy insight, which can make it hard to read in a meaningful way. You sit down to read a piece, and you love everything you hear—but two minutes later you can’t remember any of it.


Someone once suggested that after you read a verse from Proverbs, just pause. Let it linger a few seconds before going on to the next verse. Let it sink in, saturate your soul—so you can ponder God’s wisdom. That’s what we’ll try to do as we get into Chapter 31 in the next couple of articles.


5) Learn your ABCs!


This passage of Scripture is an elegant poem, 22 verses long. It’s not a coincidence that it’s 22 verses, because that’s how many letters are in the Hebrew alphabet. Lemuel’s mother wrote this passage as an acrostic, which means each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, like our A.B.C. and so on. You’re probably familiar with this structure from Psalm 119 or the book of Lamentations.


Why an acrostic, though? It might’ve been an aid to memory. Back then, God’s people didn’t have personal copies of the Scriptures, so putting things into acrostics was a way for it to be learned and remembered.


So in the Proverbs 31 acrostic, “A” stands for this quality, “B” for that characteristic, “C” for that activity, etc. We might call this text “the ABCs” of being a godly woman. Because these are the fundamentals, things that every woman of God should know. And God helping us, we can live by these truths.


Next time we’ll unpack a little more of what that will look like.

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