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Because while Proverbs 31 isn’t prescriptive, it is descriptive. It is designed to tell us the kind of woman who deserves honor and praise. In this sense, the poem is the culmination of an entire book whose main goal is to teach the difference between wisdom and foolishness. But as the beginning (Prov. 1:7) and end (Prov. 31:30) of Proverbs point out, you don’t become wise via a checklist; you become wise by fearing the Lord. To be fair, it’s easy to confuse prescriptive and descriptive passages. Obviously it happens in Proverbs 31, but it happens just as often in less controversial texts. The Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1-12) or the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) can quickly become metaphysical checklists if we divorce them from their Source and view them as goals to meet in our own strength. Just be peaceful. Check. Just be kind. Check. Just be humble. Check. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera… But while these passages are not intended as “To Do” lists, they are a kind of “field guide” given to describe what we will look like if our hearts are being changed by God. They describe the fruit and bark and leaves of the tree so you can know what kind of tree you’re looking at. In the case of Proverbs 31, the poem shows how wisdom embodies itself in feminine form; so that in a beauty only God Himself could conceive, a book written primarily to young men doesn’t climax with a
description of a mature man but with a description of a mature woman. Evans rightly pointed this out during the Q event. She noted that the original audience of Proverbs 31 was men, and joked, “Can you imagine a men’s conference where that was the central text?” (It was a pretty funny thought.) But even this isn’t the whole picture. The main audience of Proverbs 31 is men—true— but it’s given to men in order to teach them the kind of women they should celebrate. One of the assumed purposes is to distinguish wise women from foolish ones in order to help men “find” (Prov. 31:10) a good wife. Talk about sexist. Or maybe not. Maybe this actually affirms a woman’s imago dei. To understand what I mean, consider Proverbs as a whole. Throughout it, you’ll find this recurring theme: weak men can be ruined by strong men but strong men can be ruined by foolish…women. Yes, women. And here’s why: women are men’s spiritual equals. Think about it. If a woman were not equal to a man, then her spiritual life would be of little consequence to him. She simply wouldn’t be able to influence him for either good or bad. But if, as we are, equal image bearers, reigning as queens alongside earthly kings, then the kind of women we become is of supreme significance. We have intrinsic power that
