Proverbs31chapter 31

The chapter opens with "the words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him." No king by that name is known outside this text, and the same word Massa appears here as in the previous chapter, so he may be a ruler of that Arabian people. What is certain is the speaker's office: the queen mother in the courts of the region held real standing, sat near the throne, and could be named alongside the king in the records — which is why the mothers of Judah's kings are listed by name in the histories.

Her instruction is about the two things that ruin kings: women and drink. Then it turns the drink around — "give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts." The king's own cup should go to the dying man; the king's own sobriety exists so he can "judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy," which was the throne's first duty.

The closing poem is an acrostic: twenty-two lines, each beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order. That is a memory structure. It was built to be learned by heart and recited, and it is the last thing the book does.

The woman it describes runs an enterprise. She sources wool and flax and works them on the distaff and spindle; her merchandise reaches traders "like the merchants' ships"; she inspects a field, buys it, and plants a vineyard out of her own earnings; her lamp does not go out at night, which means the household has oil to spare; she clothes her family in scarlet and herself in fine linen and purple — the dye taken from murex shellfish on the Phoenician coast, the most expensive colour in the ancient world. Meanwhile her husband "is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders," which is to say he holds public office, partly because his house is in such good order.