Stealing Back Proverbs 31:10-31

I’ve used this illustration before but on November 19, 2017, one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century died: Charles Manson.

After the second set of murders associated with his name on August 10, 1969, one of the Manson cult-killers wrote “Helter Skelter” on the refrigerator of the house in which the murders took place. The phrase was from the Beatle’s White album and innocently referred to a British amusement park ride. In his deranged state, Manson somehow turned a phrase about a theme park ride into a vision of a race war and murder.

Almost 20 years later, the band U2 tried to address Manson’s distorted translation.

In the opening track, “Helter Skelter,” of U2’s 1988 Rattle & Hum, Bono shouts, “This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles and we’re stealing it back!” In the same way, “the Proverbs 31 woman” is a precious picture that uneducated, silly, and surface readings have stolen from many, and I want to steal it back!

If we took a quick survey of the average person who has some familiarity with this passage, responses would include:

“Oh no, not her again!”
“The description of what she does makes me feel exhausted!”
“Overwhelming…”
“Mary Poppins”—practically perfect in every way!
“Where are the guys? It seems that the women are working harder than the men…”

Bottomline, this passage can depress women and reinforce all sorts of ugly patriarchal expectations for both men and women. Again, God’s intent for this lofty picture has been stolen and we need to steal it back!

In order to do that, we need to understand three things:

Proverbs 31:10-31 is an elegant poem that’s artificially constructed. In fact, it’s an acrostic: each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The probable intention for doing this was to:
- Make it easy to memorize and internalize.
- Show that this woman’s character runs the whole range of excellence. It’s no accident that the poem begins and ends with mention of the woman’s “excellence” (vv.10, 29-31). And it’s best to think of these uses of excellence as bookends, or two slices of bread that sandwich together important information.
The description looks a little old-school or weird because it was written 3000 years ago in an agricultural society. As such, we would expect most women to be married and have servants. Moreover, up until about 200 years ago with the Industrial Revolutions, much of the world lived this way. I’ve written about this more extensively here, but Nancy Pearcy briefly explains our disconnect as follows: “We… need to understand… [the] economic and structural changes that make it harder to live by scriptural principles. It is enormously difficult for fathers in a modern industrialized society to function in the strong parental role Scripture calls them to—and as they did in earlier historical periods. It is likewise difficult for mothers to raise their children well, and still be faithful in honing their other gifts in a …calling.”[1]
“The Proverbs 31 woman” serves as “an ideal” for all humans to emulate, not just women. For example, Proverbs 7 gives us an “ideal” of how not to be with the adulterous or bad-news woman. In a similar, but more mic drop kind-of-way, Proverbs 31 gives us the “ideal” of the virtuous or good-news-woman. In this case, she’s an illustration of how to be. Indeed, we need to see her as the embodiment of “the full character of wisdom commended throughout the book.” Up until this point, the majority of concrete situations Proverbs has envisioned have involved a cast of males. Placing her at the end—as a kind of grand finale illustrating many of the major themes of the book, shows she’s intended to be an example for all God’s people; albeit, in a way that promotes a surprising high view of women.[2]

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