Superwoman
Who do you compare yourself to? Who is that excellent woman or amazing man? How does it make you feel when you do it? If you’re like me, it deflates you… or it puffs you up (because you feel better than them). Either way it’s a disaster! In these next three posts, I would like to focus on one of those women - a female ideal in the Bible - the “excellent wife” found in Proverbs 31. We will compare! We will win! We will lose! But more than that – God will act upon us. With this excellent woman, God is doing more than just deflating us or puffing us up. He is bringing something entirely new to life in us – and it’s not through comparison or emulation! He is putting to death the comparing/despairing/self-righteous/self-hating “you and me,” and raising to new life the free “you and me.” In these three posts, I hope to tease out the Gospel word in Proverbs to women, and then to men too.
Sean wrestled with the male hero, Joshua, in the Old Testament. He was an ancient Jewish warrior to whom Christian men have been comparing themselves ever since he lived. Sean deconstructed false masculinity and offered one that finds Jesus’ strength in our weakness (Check out the Long Shadow of Joshua). Sean used God’s promise to be with Joshua to do so. As he pulled out the promise (on which the command “be strong and courageous” entirely depends), he uncovered that Jesus makes this promise true for men and women alike. Let’s see what Proverbs has to say to that hero-seeker in all of us.
Honestly, I avoid reading the book of Proverbs. At first glance, it seems to focus exclusively on how Christians should live. When you focus on what “Christians should do” instead of what “Jesus has done,” you suck the wind from our sails. The only life-giving word is of Jesus’ grace for you (and me ;). The Law (loving others and loving God… Matthew 22:36-38) cannot give the ability to do it. It only exposes that we cannot. There is One who gives us a new heart, new desires, and faith to believe him. He gives his Spirit without measure—a river of living water, bringing what he has done into your place of need. The saint within responds only to the Gospel. The Law is for the sinner within, to bind her to the cross with Jesus. Jesus’ promises are for the saint within; the saint who only knows His voice, only his Spirit giving her faith to trust, only his reassurance that Jesus is with us.
Is there a Gospel word in Proverbs? Christians kept it in the canon of Scripture as a divinely inspired book that leads us to salvation. So where is the Gospel in Proverbs? The excellent housewife in Proverbs 31 made me want to find it ;)
In his commentary on Proverbs, Derek Kidner asserts that Proverbs “is a book that seldom takes you to church.”[1] It is about practical matters at home and in business. Nonetheless, God uses the mundane, the “everyday” to make you wise, to make you know him. Kidner reassures us that anytime we grow in grace, in godliness, in wisdom, it is a gift from the Lord, not of our own doing. And grace is not an abstraction. Wisdom and insight bring you to know God; he is their source and fulfillment. They become even more personal as Jesus, the way, the Truth, and the Life, revealed God to us (John 14:1-11).
“For the hard facts of life, which knock some of the nonsense out of us, are God’s facts and His appointed school of character; they are not alternatives to His grace, but means of it; for everything is of grace, from the power to know to the power to obey. ‘The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both’ (Prov. 20:12)”[2]
God must give us the ability to hear him. We cannot without his grace going before us. “For the Lord gives wisdom; From his mouth come knowledge and understanding” (Prov. 2:6) Paul grabs the value of wisdom and focuses it on Jesus:
And because of him [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:30)
Wisdom is a gift from God. It comes through hearing. The ability to hear God is also a gift from Him.
This wisdom is not a separate mindset from God; it is from him and leads you to him. It is not like the wisdom sayings of other religions. Biblical wisdom is personal, from a personal God: “But even though the collections [of proverbs] share some of the same interests [as other religions], the biblical material is unique in its prerequisite of a personal faith in a personal God.”[3] Wisdom reveals Jesus.
I would like to show that Wisdom, personified with a female voice (a word play on the female gender of the Hebrew noun), brings us to Jesus. “Wisdom” in Proverbs 1 and 2 show the work of Jesus to put to our “old self,” our “sin,” our “folly,” to death in order to raise a new person to life who knows the Lord. I would like to show how the “excellent wife” in Proverbs 31 bookends the book of Proverbs with a depiction of wisdom in a woman. I will find Jesus’ promise in this book of “good things” - a promise for women and men alike.
(these bookends are available on Wayfair.com ;)
Author and audience
The author of Proverbs begins with King Solomon, son of King David. However, it includes folk wisdom as well as schools of thought under King Hezekiah years after Solomon. It is mostly addressed to young men, repeating “my son.” It encourages them to listen to their father and their mother. However, it values learning from women (thus it implies women must have wisdom to share too!) It ends with exhortations from two unknown rulers, Agur and King Lemuel in chapters 30, 31.[4] King Lemuel shares the wisdom he learned from his mom.
Be perfect: the Command that kills
In Proverbs 31, King Lemuel shares his mother’s teaching and then ends with a vision of an “excellent wife” to guide his young male readers. This might be a counter-cultural, vision for the young men. King Lemuel in Proverbs 31 holds up a woman who “fears the Lord” and thus is a diligent, attentive, capable, self-sufficient, and shrewd entrepreneur, mother, woman, and wife! It doesn’t say, find the most beautiful and wealthy woman. It says, find a woman who fears the Lord. (In this sense, fear does not mean “is afraid of,” but rather one who respects, personally knows, and honors). This might convict young men. It might inspire them to praise their God-fearing sisters, moms and wives. (Affirmation is always good!) It might validate the central role a loving, faithful, diligent wife has for life on earth!
(It reminds me of the line in the true story, Secretariat, said by Penny Chenery when she saves her horse farm, her family from bankruptcy, and makes history with the fastest horse ever on record. She says, “It’s just another multi-million-dollar gamble we housewives make every day!”) It’s good to affirm. It’s good to validate. However, this ideal wife devastates women! Who can live up to it!?! Proverbs 31 shows a perfect wife. Not a good one - a perfect one - an “excellent” one.
So be like her.
If I were to end there, I would be a good Jew. A so-so Morman. A conflicted feminist (capable, yes, but identifying first as a wife?, no!) A Christian? Not yet. If Christians end their teaching there—on “be perfect as the Proverbs 31 woman is perfect”—then they would end on Law. If you just end with that, it’s not Christianity. My father, who was an Anglican Minister, author, and seminary Dean, used to say, “If you’re not talking about the cross [of Jesus Christ] then you’re not talking about Christianity.” God gave the Law to lead you to Jesus and his grace.
Jesus climbed up a mountain at the beginning of his ministry and said a similar thing as Proverbs 31: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). He was not saying that because we are able to do this. He was exposing the fact that we aren’t. Jesus was killing the sinful nature, “the old man,” (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:9-10). He was killing the sin which wants to live life without him. Only a wise, capable, diligent, attentive, loving Savior would do that for us. He summarized the entire Old Testament law on that mountain: love! He showed us we couldn’t do it.
This doesn’t stop us from trying. Perfect female images are everywhere. Take two contemporary examples. I am a huge fan of the actor Tea Leoni. She was the star of Madam Secretary, a political drama on Netflix where she was a former CIA agent turned politician. She ends up running for President as an independent, she is capable, creative, and well-respected in her career; she is emotionally present with her kids; she has a vivacious marriage. She is a secular Proverbs 31 character (minus the fear of God bit ;)!
Kelly Ripa starred in a commercial for Electrolux appliances. A beautiful woman with a beautiful home, beautiful kids, beautiful job, now hosting a beautiful dinner party (with the help of Electrolux). The commercial tagline exhorts women everywhere to “Be even more amazing!” Sigh. Exhaustion. Pressure. My kids will tell you what I’m like two days after a “be more amazing” day… it’s not amazing! The old self in us will rise up and say let’s do it! But the Law is relentless, always demanding more. The worst thing God could do would be to not do anything, to let us spin ourselves in circles finding new ways to kill ourselves (that’s Romans 1 or Prov. 1:31). But he didn’t. God has not left us alone. He came, the perfect One, and gave his life to save ours.
To the exhausted, outcast, and broken, Jesus brought comfort. They were ready to hear his word of grace. To the self-righteous, the perfectionist, the narcissist, Jesus brought the Law. He loved them enough to bring the old ways to an end. You cannot be the Proverbs 31 wife. It was meant to expose your need for a Savior who is for you. He is with you now to do what we cannot.
More death-to-life action to come in Proverbs! Stay tuned…
Endnotes
≥[1] Derek Kidner, Proverbs: An Introduction and Commentary, edited by D.J. Wiseman, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1964), 35.
[2] Kidner, Proverbs, 35.
[3] Daniel Estes, Handbook on the Wisdom Books and Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 2005), 223.
[4] Estes, Handbook on the Wisdom Books, 213-217.
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