Proverbs31chapter 31

Proverbs 31:1-3

The words of king Lemuel: The words of king Lemuel carry the same honest note as Agur's chapter before it, a king otherwise unknown to history, taught by his mother rather than claiming wisdom of his own. Jewish tradition identifies Lemuel with Solomon as well, a name of affection from his mother rather than a birth name, a reading the rabbinic sources carry and the text itself never states outright. Her charge opens on the same danger Proverbs has warned against from chapter 5 onward: give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings, the strange woman's threat now addressed to a ruler whose strength belongs to a nation.

Proverbs 31:4-7

It is not for kings: It is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink states the counsel plainly: rulers whose task is to judge cannot afford a clouded mind, lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted. The verses that follow give strong drink to a different use entirely, to him that is ready to perish and to those of heavy hearts, so he may forget his poverty and remember his misery no more, wine as relief for the dying rather than daily counsel for the ruling. The commentators note the contrast is deliberate: the same drink that unfits a king for justice is offered as mercy to a man with nothing left to judge.

Proverbs 31:8-9

Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction turns the chapter from private caution to public duty, the king's voice lent to those who have none. The command repeats, open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy, making advocacy for the powerless the substance of righteous judgment rather than an addition to it. The chapter's two halves share one logic: a king sober enough to judge and willing enough to speak for the voiceless is the portrait Lemuel's mother is building toward before she turns to the woman who completes it.

Proverbs 31:10-13

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies opens the poem the mother has been building toward, and the Hebrew text is an alphabet acrostic, twenty two verses for the twenty two letters, a structural fact the bench states rather than a coincidence of style. Her husband's heart safely trusts her, and she does him good and not evil all the days of her life, the poem's frame before a single deed is listed. The first labor named is textile work, seeking wool and flax and working willingly with her hands, willingly repeating the same idea the poem returns to, a heart that works rather than merely obeys.

Proverbs 31:14-19

She is like the merchants' ships, she bringeth her food from afar states the portrait's scope directly: this is trade reaching beyond the household, not domestic labor kept inside it. She rises while it is yet night to provide for her household and her maidens, considers a field and buys it, and plants a vineyard with the fruit of her own hands, three decisions of ownership and investment the text credits to her judgment alone. Strength girded to her loins and arms and a candle that does not go out by night complete the picture of a woman working past the hours anyone would require of her, spinning at the spindle and distaff before the poem turns outward again.

Proverbs 31:20-24

She stretcheth out her hand to the poor, and reacheth forth her hands to the needy sets her wealth toward charity before the poem lists what that wealth affords her own household, snow met by scarlet clothing rather than fear. Her self-made coverings of fine weave, silk, and purple describe genuine luxury, and the text does not apologize for it, reading the household's comfort as the fruit of the labor already described rather than a separate indulgence. Her husband is known in the gates, sitting among the elders of the land, a public standing the poem credits to her management as much as to him, and she sells what she makes, fine linen and girdles, to the merchants directly.

Proverbs 31:25-31

Strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come answers the earlier line about her household's clothing with the clothing that is her own character. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness, and she looks well to the ways of her household, eating not the bread of idleness, the poem's last deeds before the verdict. Her children and her husband both rise to call her blessed, and the poem's motto lands at verse 30: favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised, the fear of the Lord that opened the book in chapter 1 closing it here. The final verse asks nothing further of her, give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates, the portrait ending where it began, in the public gate where her husband was known.