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Session 3 – The wife of noble character
A study on Proverbs 31:10-31 from the team at St Ebbe's Oxford
Proverbs 31:10-31
Things perhaps to note about the passage are (i) that it is an acrostic, in that each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That perhaps would have helped make it easier to memorise, but means that there is less likely to be an obvious progression of thought between verses.
Also (ii) as the final section of the book we might expect it to draw together and summarize much of what has been covered. The woman is a fleshed out example of what wisdom looks like in practice; she is an embodiment of the wisdom in the book. She is not meant to discourage us (“too good to be true”), but rather to encourage us to go for wisdom and to grasp what it looks like when lived out.
And (iii) it is surely not only instructive if you are a married woman (and a fairly well off married woman at that). The book has often had young men particularly in mind as the presumed audience. This provides a balance which shows that the wisdom in the book is for everyone, and we must think how the principles of wisdom might be applied in our own lives and context (which for many of us will be very different from hers).