In Part 1 of this post, I talked about my early thoughts about the Proverbs 31 Woman: from my childhood perception of her as a wise, kind instructor that I should emulate, to the law-ridden measuring stick of Christian womanhood that I could never live up to (and was regularly hit over the head with). If the Proverbs 31 Woman and I were Facebook friends, our relationship would read “it’s complicated.”

A week or so ago, I was working on a paper about wisdom literature (Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes–perhaps Song of Songs and some of the Psalms) for my Biblical Theology class. As it turns out, there’s a lot more to the Proverbs 31 Woman than we give her credit for.

What I want to do is say “I’m not going to go into the theology of it right now,” go on with my story and make my point. But since that would be completely contrary to my point, I’m going to give a very brief overview of the theological implications of Proverbs 31. And since I’m terrified that the elementary grasp I have gained on wisdom literature from the two classes I’ve taken that dealt with the subject may only confuse the issue, you’re going to have to bear with me, okay? If what I’m saying seems unclear just ask me about it, and I can try to clarify and point you to books by people who know a lot more about wisdom literature than me. ;-D Okay? Okay.

The overriding theme of all wisdom literature is “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” C.G. Bartholomew writes in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology “If wisdom is about knowing how to live a successful life in God’s world, the the fear of the Lord is an indispensable starting point. The route to true wisdom will not be found apart from the particularity of God’s salvation of Israel…Yahweh is the redeemer and creator; those who start with him are led to a right understanding of how his world works.”

Are we good so far? God created the world through his wisdom, God created the nation of Israel by saving them from slavery in Egypt, so if we want to understand how to live in this world, if we want to learn how to live as God’s saved people, we need to begin, always, by acknowledging and following God. That’s what the book of Proverbs is about. All of it.

Bartholomew continues “In Proverbs, underlying the metaphors of the two ways, the two houses and the two women, is an understanding of creation as ordered by God…The earth, according to Proverbs, was ‘founded by wisdom’ and Lady Wisdom was present throughout God’s creation and delighted in it.”

Whoa, hold up. Who is this lady? This is where things start to get confusing (but hang in here with me, okay ladies?).

Back to C.G. Bartholomew: “In Proverbs 8 (as elsewhere in Proverbs 1-9), wisdom is personified as Lady Wisdom, but it is unclear how this figure is to be understood. Some see her as a personification of Yahweh’s own wisdom by which he created the world. However, the poem distinguishes her from Yahweh, just as elsewhere in the OT the angel of the Lord, the word of the Lord and the name of the Lord are associated with but distinguished from Yahweh.”

Okay, I’m REALLY not going to go into all that right now! But suffice it to say, there’s some pretty hard-core female imagery and metaphors happening in the first third of Proverbs.

Bartholomew continues “The woman of Proverbs 31 is placed at the end of the book of Proverbs as a paradigm of a wise person.”

Okay, so we begin Proverbs with Lady Wisdom preaching in the streets, imploring people to commit to following her ways instead of the way of her opposite, the Adulteress Folly, which leads to death. We end Proverbs with a woman teaching her son to commit to a wise woman who fears the Lord, instead of chasing the deceptive charms of outward beauty that will wither and fade.

Anyone sense a literary theme?

There’s so much more that can and should be said, but this is already getting long, and I haven’t made my point yet.

Which leads us to Part 3.