Proverbs 31:10-31
October 20
David A. Davis
Jump to audio
Before reading our sermon text today, I feel a nudge to remind everyone that I did not select Proverbs 31. We are beginning our “Linked In” fall series as small groups, adult education, and sermons all work with the same scripture week. The theme is “Women of the Old Testament”. I’m pretty confident that for obvious reasons, I probably am not the best choice to preach this text. But the texts were selected after the preaching calendar was set and next week I will be at the Broadway Presbyterian Church in NYC for our granddaughter Maddy’s baptism. I have actually never preached Proverbs 31. 30 or 35 years ago, occasionally a family would ask me to read selected verses at the funeral of the family matriarch. A woman from a generation who might have had the verses cross-stitched and framed and hanging somewhere in the house.
Before you read along and/or listen to the text from Proverbs, some context may be helpful. The 31st chapter is the last chapter of this book of wisdom attributed at the very beginning to King Solomon. The 31st chapter and the 1st chapter bookend the content with “the fear of the Lord.” “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (1:7). Fear as in awe or worship. Scholars point out that Proverbs 31 is a Hebrew Poem. A Hebrew acrostic poem where, like several of the psalms, each section begins with a Hebrew letter and the psalmist works their way through the Hebrew alphabet. Old Testament professor Elaine James is leading the education hour conversation this morning with the title Women, Poetry and God: reading Proverbs 31.
Part of Dr. James’s expertise is Hebrew poetry in the bible. In her writing on this chapter, she gives the preacher some cautionary notes or interpretive moves to be avoided. They are relevant not just to the preacher but to the reader/listener as well. Among those warnings, Dr. James argues that one cannot ignore the countless differences between ancient households and contemporary ones or set up the poem as some sort of glorification of endless hard work for others that sets an ideal and impossible standard for women. Neither should be portrayed as casting any sort of singular definition of gender role perfection. It is, after all, a poem crafted in a patriarchal world. With these notes for listening and receiving and pondering…
Psalm 31:10-31
The work of her hands. A field purchased. A vineyard planted with her hands. Strong arms making merchandise that is profitable. Her hands to the spindle. Her hands open to the poor. Her hands reaching the needy. Self-made garments. Linen garments made to sell. Strength, dignity, humor, wisdom, teaching kindness. Elaine James points out the Hebrew word translated as “capable” as in “capable wife” at the beginning is the same word used near the end, translated as “excellently”: “Many women have done excellently but you surpass them all.” The professor suggests that since that Hebrew word has connotations of military strength, “courageous” might be a better translation. The word for “wife” is the same in Hebrew as “woman”.
The poetry tells of a courageous woman whose works are praised at the city gates. At the city gates where in the ancient world the male elders, leaders, and deciders gathered (including as mentioned in the text, the courageous woman’s husband.) At the city gates, the works of her calloused hands were praised by the top rungs of the patriarchal hierarchy. The works of her strong arms are not taken for granted but praised. Her courage was not diminished but lauded. Perhaps a timeless affirmation in the then and now patriarchal world. A poem that begins with the question “a capable wife who can find?” shattering all expectations and assumptions clung to in that world, this world. Right about now in this sermon, the title of a book written by retired professor of Old Testament Kathi Sakenfeld, leaps off the page: Just Wives? Stories of Power and Survival in the Old Testament and Today.
It shouldn’t be glossed over that the only mention of children in the poem is near the end. “Her children rise up and call her happy”. Better translated as “blessed”. “Her children rise up and call her blessed.” No mention of caring for children in all the descriptions of the work of her hands. Yes, that could be because the poetry paints a picture of a wealthy household where others may tend to the children. But in the days we live, as so many who sit at the city gates and bask in the patriarchal hierarchy threaten a woman’s healthcare, a woman’s right to her own body, a woman’s access to the best science, and define a woman’s worth only by bearing and raising children way too often using faith and these pages of scriptures as their justification, the art of the poetry of Proverbs 31 comes with a shattering irony. The art of poetry that tells of a courageous woman.
My friend Scott Hoezee at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids MI writes that reading Proverbs 31 is sort of like finding a shoe box of old pictures in a closet in your great-grandmother’s house after her death. Another form of art that depicts an ancient world unfamiliar to you and unimaginable to you. Pictures that often raise many more questions than answers when it comes to what life was like. Before my mother died, she created a photo album of those pictures for my sister, brother and me. You can see those really old family photographs in your mind. Not just black and white, but dark and rather stark. Pictures of people not one smiling but staring right at the camera. My mom wanted to make sure we knew who was in those pictures/. She wrote with a big old Sharpie marker all the names, grandma this, great aunt that, great grandpa so and so. Just a family note, in my mother’s wisdom, she wrote with a sharpie right on the front of the photograph rather than the back!
As the youngest child, my siblings can remember a few more relatives in those photographs than I can. I have no memories of three of my grandparents. The only one I can remember is my grandmother Jesse Aubrey. I am named after my grandfather David Aubrey. Grandma Aubrey died when I was in early high school. One of the memories I have is as a young boy. Grandma was staying overnight in our house. She never lived with us so maybe it was a holiday. She seemed a gazillion years old to me and she went to bed early. One evening as I came out of my room, I could hear her talking behind the closed door in the guest room. I did what any young boy would do. I stuck my ear closer to hear who she was talking to. It was before cell phones and I didn’t think anyone else was in there. I thought maybe was doing a grandma thing and talking to herself. As I intruded with my listening, I figured out she was talking to God. Grandma was saying her bedtime prayers and she wasn’t whispering. My family only prayed out loud at home at the dinner table on holidays. It was the first time I ever heard someone praying out loud other than at church. I consider that experience to be the first influence of someone on my faith.
“Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her a share in the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the city gates.” The Book of Proverbs begins and ends with the “fear of the Lord.”
Amanda Gorman published a book of her poetry written during the years of the pandemic. You remember that she wrote the poem “The Hill We Climb” for the 2020 presidential inauguration. The title poem of her book is “What We Carry.” These two poems have a movement that lean toward a powerful culmination in the last few phrases. Not for all her work, but for these it is as if the poem starts pianissimo (very softly) and ends double forte. Listen to the optimism, hope and power of the end of “The Hill We Climb”
We will rise from the gold-limned hills of the West!
We will rise from the windswept Northeast, where our
forefathers first realized revolution!
We will rise from late-rimmed cities of Midwestern states!
We will rise from the sunbaked south!
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover/
In every known nook of our nation.
In every corner called our country.
Our people diverse and dutiful.
We’ll emerge battered but beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the dark,
Aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always a light.
If only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
Similarly, written about life in the pandemic, the ending soars with a defying hope.
In discarding almost everything-
Our rage, our wreckage
Our hubris, our hate
Our ghosts, our greed
Our wrath, our wars
On the beating shore.
We haven’t any haven from them here/
Rejoice, for what we have left behind will not free us.
But what we have left is all we need.
We are enough.
Armed only with our hands.
Open but unemptied,
Just like a blooming thing.
We walk into tomorrow
Carrying nothing
But the world.
Maybe the poetry of the wisdom writer of the Book of Proverbs is shaped in the same way. Sloped in emphasis toward the conclusion. The exhausting, exhaustive description of the everyday life of the courageous woman who shatters all expectations concludes in bold print and underlined. To be read with emphasis. “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband too, and he praises her. ‘Many women have done excellently but you surpass them all’. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her a share in the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the city gates.”
A poem that concludes with the most important part. A conclusion that underscores, repeats, and puts an exclamation point on the most important part of wisdom and courage. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Or as the apostle Paul puts it at the end of his sermon on resurrection hope: “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is never in vain.”