A Looking Glass for Ladies

An excellent wife, who can find?

For her worth is far above jewels.

-Proverbs 31:10

Many of us try to avoid the Proverbs 31 woman.  She seems to be a special type of wonder woman, a picture of perfection that is out of reach for most normal women.  She rises while it is still night, she stays up past dark, she works with her hands, she avoids idleness, and she earns money in her free time.  A glance in her direction makes most of us want to run the opposite way.  Her perfection causes us to make excuses for our inability to live up to her standard.  But Matthew Henry calls this passage a “looking-glass for ladies, which they are desired to open and dress themselves by; and, if they do so, their adorning will be found to praise, and honor, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”  And so I am emboldened to consider this model of womanhood.

Proverbs 31:10-31 is an acrostic poem that uses each of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in sequence to begin the first word of each verse.  Dorothy Patterson suggests that its literary form may have made it easier to commit the passage to memory.  Indeed the passage was recited in many Jewish homes on the eve of Sabbath to challenge and express gratitude to the mother in the home.  Or possibly its acrostic style was used to emphasize the characteristics used to describe this ideal woman, characteristics outlined by a mother for her son who would be king.  It was a description of the type of wife he should seek, a virtuous woman worth more than rubies, a wife suitable for a king. 

In the poem King Lemuel’s mother sings the praises of a worthy wife and godly mother.  This woman is excellent or, as some Bible versions state, virtuous.  The Hebrew word chayil is used here.  It means might, strength, power.  This is the description of a strong woman.  She is capable and energetic with a high sense of dignity.  In Ruth 3:11 Boaz used the same word to describe Ruth, “for all the people in the city know that you are a woman of excellence (chayil).”  Ruth, a widow, left her own homeland to travel with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem.  She rose early each morning and gleaned in the fields to provide food for her mother-in-law and herself.  She displayed a dignified strength and a loyal love that went beyond what was expected.   

What reassures me most about chayil is that I do not have to rely on my own virtue or strength to possess it.  God gives me this dignified strength as the Psalmist affirms in Psalm 18:31-32:  “For who is God, but the Lord?  And who is a rock, except our God, the God who girds me with strength (chayil) and makes my way blameless.”  The woman who fears the Lord is girded with strength and He makes her way blameless.  I still examine the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 with hesitation.  But I am encouraged by the fact that she is given as an example, a looking glass for ladies.  I am unable to match her skills and creativity perfectly, no woman can, but I can learn from her example and I can strive to exhibit the excellence and strength that she reflects with the help of the Lord Who is my rock and my fortress.