'A quarrelsome wife is like a dripping tap!': The Women of Proverbs
The title of this newsletter is a paraphrase of one of the Proverbs which springs readily to my mind when I think about women in the book.
At times, the text is less than complimentary about women, so how should we interpret the female figures that the book uses to communicate its message?
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
It is important for us to remember that when we read the passages about women in the text, we are reading what men thought about women in their context. As I mentioned in my last post, Proverbs 1-9 is probably the later part of the book, so the authors were likely to be educated men living in an urban context after the exile.
Carol Newsom, in an excellent chapter on Proverbs which you can access for free on google books, discusses the way in which this text shows the habit of men to ‘think symbolically by means of woman’.1 We see this also in texts like Lamentations, Ezekiel and Jeremiah where Jerusalem is symbolically described, or personified, as a woman.
The women we find in Proverbs are similarly symbolic. Each of them represents a different side of how the writers saw women in their context. Let’s take a look at four of them…
Strange Woman
The ‘strange’ woman of Proverbs appears throughout chapters 1-9. The Hebrew of 6:24, translated ‘strange’ more literally reads ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. The implication in chapter 6 is that the root of her strange, or evil nature is that she is married to someone else. She, therefore, represents the possibility of adultery, in violation of the 7th commandment.
The Strange Woman is described as being smooth of tongue and of words (6:24; 7:5; 7:21;). Within the wisdom tradition more broadly (Job, Ecclesiastes, etc), these things are consistently associated with danger. As Carol Newsom describes this makes the Strange Woman the ‘chief rival’ of the narrative voice, a father who is trying to keep his son on the straight and narrow.2
The ‘Strange Woman’ represents a potent mix of rhetoric, sexuality, and danger.
Lady Folly
While the strange woman is represented as wiley and smart, Lady Folly is more akin to the village idiot. She is described in 9:13 as ‘loud’ and ‘ignorant, calling to those who are walking a good and ‘straight path’. She does not have the subtle tools of seduction attributed to the Strange Woman. Yet, she still attracts some guests to her table, who soon find themselves in the ‘depths of Sheol’ (9:18), the underworld of the Hebrew Bible.
Lady Wisdom
Like Lady Folly. Lady Wisdom calls to those who are ‘naive or ‘simple’ (9:4; 9:16). Unlike Lady Folly, she has built a stable house and prepared a meal. This is more than house-wifely hospitality - Lady Wisdom is described and building her house on seven pillars and slaughtering her animals. She is competent and creative.
Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly are in parallel with one another. As Newsom says ‘one is the gate of Sheol the other the gate of heaven.3 They are opposites, which makes their differences stand out. For the text to be effective in its task of forming the reader in their moral abilities (see the previous newsletter…), we need both.
The Proverbs 31 Woman
At the end of the book of Proverbs, we find its most well-known female figure. Verses 10-31 is an acrostic poem, with each line beginning with the letters of the alphabet in sequence. The NRSV translates the first phrase of v10 as ‘capable wife’, but this is a pale reflection of the Hebrew. The phrase ‘אֵֽשֶׁת־חַ֭יִל’ might just as well be translated woman of ‘excellence’, ‘strength’ or ‘power’, since the second word of the phrase is related to combat.
She is an artisan, a trader, a land owner and a farmer. The passage ends with a criticism of beauty, because in contrast with everything else she has to offer it is fleeting. There is much more to this woman than her appearance.
What are we to make of this mixed picture? Within the patriarchal worldview reflected in the text, these four women represent different possibilities for women in the mind of the author(s).
Women could be dangerous temptresses, leading ‘innocent young men’ down the path away from life and to destruction. They could be simple, encouraging others to follow them in their foolishness. But they could also be wise, embodying the highest virtue of the wisdom tradition.
The writers of Proverbs, however, never allow the women they create to be complex. They are either foolish or wise. They are sinful or virtuous.
The reality, which the writers of Proverbs miss, is that from day to day all of us - regardless of gender - shuttle between wisdom and foolishness.
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Carol Newsom, ‘Woman and the Discourse of Proverbs in Reading Bibles Writing Bodies’ in Peggy Day (ed.) Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (Louisville: Fortress Press, 1989) p 155
Newsom, ‘Woman and the Discourse of Proverbs’ p 153
Newsom, ‘Woman and the Discourse of Proverbs’ p 157