Proverbs 31: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter has two parts. First come the words King Lemuel's mother taught him: warnings against giving his strength to women and against kings drinking wine, and a charge to speak up for those who have no voice and to judge fairly for the poor. Second is a poem in praise of a wife of strong character, describing her trading, her farming, her spinning and sewing, her care for her household and for the needy, her speech, and the praise her children, her husband, and her own work bring her.

Claim by Claim

1. 31:1
   • These are the words of King Lemuel.
   • The words are an oracle, a burden laid on him.
   • His mother instructed him with these words.
2. 31:2
   • The speaker asks, "What, my son?"
   • The speaker asks, "What, son of my womb?"
   • The speaker asks, "What, son of my vows?"
3. 31:3
   • She tells him not to give his strength to women.
   • She tells him not to give his ways to that which destroys kings.
4. 31:4
   • It is not for kings, Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine.
   • It is not for rulers to desire strong drink.
5. 31:5
   • The reason given is that otherwise he will drink and forget what has been decreed.
   • The reason given is that otherwise he will alter the judgment due to all the afflicted.
6. 31:6
   • Give strong drink to the one who is perishing.
   • Give wine to those who are bitter in soul.
7. 31:7
   • Let him drink and forget his poverty.
   • Let him remember his trouble no more.
8. 31:8
   • Open your mouth for the one who cannot speak.
   • Open your mouth for the legal cause of all who are passing away, that is, the doomed or dispossessed.
9. 31:9
   • Open your mouth and judge righteously.
   • Defend the legal cause of the poor and the needy.
10. 31:10
    • The question is asked: who can find a capable and worthy wife?
    • Her worth is far beyond that of precious jewels, whether corals or pearls.
11. 31:11
    • The heart of her husband trusts in her.
    • He lacks no gain.
12. 31:12
    • She does him good and not harm.
    • She does so all the days of her life.
13. 31:13
    • She seeks out wool and flax.
    • She works with willing hands.
14. 31:14
    • She is like merchant ships.
    • She brings her food from far away.
15. 31:15
    • She rises while it is still night.
    • She gives food to her household.
    • She gives a portion to her serving girls.
16. 31:16
    • She considers a field and takes it.
    • From the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
17. 31:17
    • She girds her waist with strength.
    • She makes her arms strong.
18. 31:18
    • She perceives that her trading is good.
    • Her lamp does not go out at night.
19. 31:19
    • She puts out her hands to one spinning implement.
    • Her palms grasp the other spinning implement.
    • Which of the two implements is the distaff and which the spindle is uncertain.
20. 31:20
    • She spreads out her palm to the poor.
    • She stretches out her hands to the needy.
21. 31:21
    • She has no fear for her household when it snows.
    • All her household is clothed in scarlet.
22. 31:22
    • She makes coverings for herself.
    • Her clothing is fine linen and purple.
23. 31:23
    • Her husband is known in the gates.
    • He sits among the elders of the land.
24. 31:24
    • She makes linen garments and sells them.
    • She supplies sashes to the merchant.
25. 31:25
    • Strength and dignity are her clothing.
    • She laughs at the time to come.
26. 31:26
    • She opens her mouth with wisdom.
    • Instruction of kindness is on her tongue.
27. 31:27
    • She watches over the ways of her household.
    • She does not eat the bread of idleness.
28. 31:28
    • Her children rise up and call her blessed.
    • Her husband also praises her.
29. 31:29
    • Many daughters have done capably.
    • The speaker says to her that she surpasses them all.
30. 31:30
    • Charm is deceitful.
    • Beauty is fleeting.
    • A woman who fears the LORD is the one who shall be praised.
31. 31:31
    • Give her from the fruit of her hands.
    • Let her works praise her in the gates.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

31:1

Lemuel appears nowhere else in the Bible, and no king of that name is known from history; the name means something like "belonging to God." The Hebrew word behind "prophecy" (massa) means an utterance or a load laid on someone, but it is also a place name (Massa, an Arabian tribe descended from Ishmael), so the line can equally be read "king of Massa." This is one of the few passages in the Bible presented as teaching from a mother rather than a father.

31:2

A vow was a formal promise made to God, often in exchange for a request granted. A woman without children might promise that if she were given a son, she would dedicate him to God's service, Hannah does exactly this in 1 Samuel 1. "Son of my vows" points to that kind of promise.

31:3

"Give not thy strength unto women" is a warning against a king exhausting himself and his household in a large harem, a normal feature of ancient royal courts, and one that could drain a kingdom's wealth and split its politics through rival wives and heirs.

31:4

"Strong drink" translates Hebrew shekar, meaning fermented drink made from something other than grapes, barley beer, or drink made from dates, pomegranates or honey. It is not distilled liquor, which did not yet exist.

31:5

"Forget the law" here means forgetting what has been decreed. In this society the king was also the highest judge, so a drunk king was not merely intoxicated: he was a court that had stopped working, and the poor, who had no other protector, lost first.

31:6

Giving strong drink to "him that is ready to perish" refers to the dying and those in severe pain or grief; wine was the only painkiller available. The custom of offering a drugged drink to a condemned man appears again at the crucifixion in Mark 15:23.

31:8

"Dumb" in 1611 English simply meant unable to speak, with no insult attached. In a court setting it covers anyone with no voice in the proceedings. The phrase behind "appointed to destruction" is literally "sons of passing away," and is genuinely ambiguous: it may mean those under sentence of death, or those left destitute and passing out of society.

31:10

Verses 10 to 31 form an acrostic poem: each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, twenty-two verses for twenty-two letters. The form signals completeness, the subject covered from A to Z, and would have made the poem easier to memorize. The word translated "virtuous" is hayil, a word normally used of soldiers and of wealth; it means force, capability, competence. Elsewhere it is translated "army," "valour," "substance." "Rubies" (peninim) is an uncertain term; it may mean red coral or pearls.

31:11

"He shall have no need of spoil" uses the word for plunder taken in war, in an economy where raiding was a recognized way to get rich, the point is that her husband has no need of gain from any other source.

31:13

Flax is the plant whose stalk fibers are spun into linen. Wool and flax were the two raw materials of all ancient cloth, and turning them into finished garments (washing, combing, spinning, weaving, dyeing) was months of skilled labor.

31:14

Merchant ships brought luxury and foreign goods over long distances. The comparison is about reach and enterprise, not about literal sailing: she sources what her household needs from wherever it is best obtained.

31:15

"Meat" in 1611 English meant food of any kind, not flesh specifically. The "portion" given to her servant women is their allotted ration of food, and the Hebrew word can also carry the sense of their assigned task for the day.

31:16

In this society land was normally held and transferred by men within a family line. A woman assessing a field and buying it with her own earnings, then planting it as a vineyard, a long-term investment that yields nothing for several years, describes independent commercial authority that a first reader would have found striking.

31:17

"Girding the loins" meant gathering up the long, loose robe and tucking it into the belt so the legs were free to run or work hard. It became a standard idiom for getting ready for strenuous effort.

31:18

Lamps were small clay dishes of olive oil with a floating wick. Keeping one burning all night cost real money, so the detail signals both prosperity and long working hours.

31:19

The distaff and spindle are the two hand tools of spinning. The distaff is a rod holding the mass of raw wool or flax; the spindle is a weighted stick that is set turning, twisting the drawn-out fibers into thread. This was the fundamental female craft of the ancient world, and the source of all cloth.

31:21

Scarlet cloth was wool dyed with an expensive red pigment made from crushed insects, clothing that marked wealth. Some ancient manuscripts and translations read a nearly identical Hebrew word meaning "double," that is, double thickness, which fits the mention of snow; both readings are defensible.

31:22

Purple dye was extracted drop by drop from murex sea snails on the Mediterranean coast; it took thousands of shellfish to dye a single garment, which made purple the most expensive color known and the standard mark of royalty and great wealth. The KJV's "silk" is a guess at a word that means fine linen, probably the sheer Egyptian kind.

31:23

The open space just inside a city gate was the town's public square, marketplace and law court all at once. The elders, senior heads of families, sat there to settle disputes and witness contracts. To be "known in the gates" is to hold recognized standing in the government of the town.

31:24

"Girdles" are sashes or belts, long woven bands wound at the waist; a good one was a valuable article of dress and a standard trade good. The Hebrew word for "merchant" here is literally "Canaanite," since Canaanite and Phoenician traders so dominated commerce that the name became the ordinary word for a trader.

31:25

To "laugh at the days to come" is not mockery but confidence: she has no dread of the future, because she has provided against it.

31:26

"The law of kindness" is literally the teaching (torah) of chesed, chesed being loyal, committed kindness, the sort owed within a covenant or family rather than casual niceness. The line describes her as an instructor, a role the book of Proverbs elsewhere assigns to a father or a sage.

31:27

"The bread of idleness" is food eaten without having earned it, an idiom for living off other people's work.

31:28

To "call her blessed" is to declare publicly that she is fortunate and enviable, a formal pronouncement rather than a private compliment.

31:29

"Daughters" here simply means women. The verse is the husband's quoted speech, which begins after "he praiseth her" in verse 28.

31:30

To "fear the LORD" in Hebrew usage means reverence and awed loyalty toward God expressed in how one lives, not fright. LORD printed in capitals stands for the personal name of God in the Hebrew, four consonants usually written YHWH, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud.

31:31

"The fruit of her hands" means the earnings and produce her own work has generated, the poem ends by asking that she receive them, and be publicly commended in the same city gate where her husband sits.