Who is the Woman of Proverbs 31? | Tim Henderson+

Good morning everybody. Good morning. It's good to be with you today. So grab your bibles. We are gonna be finishing up our study that we've been at for about six to eight weeks on the book of Proverbs. And as you might expect, that means we're gonna look at the final chapter of Proverbs, which is Proverbs 31.

Throughout this series we've been looking at Proverbs essentially topically. We've said what do the Proverbs say about anger? What do the Proverbs say about sloth? What do the Proverbs say about generosity and poverty? I hope that those lessons have been helpful to ponder and think through where do I see these things in my life? I also hope that maybe some of you have developed a new habit to read one chapter of Proverbs a day as it corresponds to the date of the month.

We could this morning continue that process with a topical look at Proverbs with a final message drawn from Proverbs 31. And if we did that, what would our topic be? Women, or marriage, or wife—whatever that would be. Proverbs 31 is a well-known poem about the excellent wife, or maybe some translations might call her the noble wife. My guess would be that many of you ladies have heard a talk on Proverbs 31, maybe at some women's conference somewhere.

But we're not going to do that. Because if we did, if I just turned this into a typical Proverbs 31 "go be a good wife" talk, then we would miss out on something important. And not only that, but it would be probably pretty likely that I would deepen a misunderstanding about what's going on in Proverbs 31. And if there's anything in the world that I hate to do, it is to deepen misunderstandings.

So in order to end well, we're gonna try to begin well and I want to go back with you to the very beginning of the book of Proverbs. But when we do, we're gonna just kind of turn the kaleidoscope like one click and see if you don't begin to see something a little bit differently.

This may be for some of you kind of a Sixth Sense moment. Do you guys remember the movie Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan? M. Night Shyamalan would make these films where you think you're just watching a normal movie and then like in the last ten minutes something happens that completely blows your mind and reinterprets the entire story. It's possible to learn something at the very end that reframes the way the whole thing has gone. And that's what I want to try to do with you this morning.

I want to share something with you that, I'll be honest with you, I didn't intuit this myself. This is not original with me. I would say in the current era that the person who teaches this the clearest and the best is a commentator named Tremper Longman, who is a brilliant Bible scholar. But it was actually a personal friend of mine, a guy named Nick Nowak, who some of you know, who I think was the first person to point this out to me in a way that I'd never seen before. It wasn't obvious but I hope it will be clear and persuasive to you because I think this is really cool and it's not to be missed. It saves us from some errors that we'll get to in a minute.

Understanding Proverbs as Narrative

What I want to do as we look at Proverbs is overlay the whole book with kind of a narrative grid. I want you to see the book of Proverbs as a story, not just a bunch of unconnected aphorisms or little truisms, which is the way we tend to read it. The book often seems disjointed—just kind of all these random topics shuffled together. But I think it's possible to turn the thing a click and then look at it as a narrative and then something might show up that you would have otherwise missed.

Proverbs begins as a story about a young man who has the whole world before him. His life is before him, the world is before him, and he's growing up. And fortunately for him, he's not alone. He's not being raised by wolves. He's not just forced to figure this out as he goes. But there is an older man in his life who loves him and who desperately wants good things for him. It's his father.

And in the opening chapters of Proverbs, this father is coming to this young man and over and over and over again he's exhorting him. He's basically saying that son, there's two paths in this world.

Or more aptly, there's really one path but it constantly forks into two. There's a path of wisdom and a path of folly. It would be lovely if there were just two paths and you just got on the path of wisdom, set it on cruise control and just went, but that's not the way it plays out.

What you're gonna find, what he's telling his son is that over and over and over again, there's gonna be a fork in the path—choose wisdom. And then another fork in the path—choose wisdom. And another fork in the path—choose wisdom. Over and over again.

As the book begins, there's this longing from this father that his son would make the right choice. Here's one of the expressions of it. He does it repeatedly, but we'll look at the one that comes in chapter two where he's like, "Listen son, it is imperative that you listen to your mom and I. The crucial step in your life is that you would obtain wisdom, that you would be on the right path."

Here's how he does it in chapter two:

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, if you will call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, if you will look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure... — Proverbs 2:1-4

Okay? If you do all these things—really, it's one thing: long for wisdom, pursue wisdom. If you do that, there's gonna be a payout. Okay? Watch what the payout is though, because this is where the record kinda skips for me. If you look for silver, search for it as for hidden treasure:

Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. — Proverbs 2:5

If I were that little boy listening to my father, I'd be like, "Wait, wait, what? You're saying if I do this, if I do this, if I do this—I thought you were gonna say you'll be rich. If you do this, if you do this, if you do this, you'll be successful or at the very least you'll be happy." And instead he says, "You'll be afraid."

Right? You should be like, "Woah, wait. Is that what I'm looking for?" It's a strange thing that he says. Here's how this path begins: it begins with fear.

The Fear of the Lord

The crazy thing about fear is that we don't like fear because overwhelmingly the things that we fear are bad. Right? We fear snakes, we fear cancer, we fear bankruptcy. And so when we come to this moment where he's like, "And if you do all these things then you'll be afraid"—when you hear "fear God," you might think, "Well, why would I fear him? Is he bad? Is he like a snake?"

And the answer is no, not at all. He's nothing like a snake. We don't fear God because he is bad. We fear God because we are bad.

I do not fear, we do not fear God like a patient fears cancer. We fear God like cancer fears chemo.

And what this father is saying to the son is: if that single idea—if that will fall into place, if that will click in for you—that this is his world, not my world. But that I routinely, like on the regular, violate his expectations of me. And that will put me in a position of contrition, of humility, a softness. I will find myself thirsting for grace. I will rejoice when I find it. And my heart will just be filled with gratitude.

When that happens, if that happens, then I will have this sense of penitence before the one who justly evaluates my life. And if I do that, if I'm there in that place, that is gonna be just an incredible help—that I might choose the right fork with every decision that comes my way.

And so the father is framing this for his son: "Listen son, the path's gonna diverge. Here's how it's gonna help you to choose the right path: you must live your life in a way that you actually fear him."

And so the father has this conversation for like eight chapters. It goes on and on and on. He basically keeps saying the same thing: "Like son, listen to me." You ever say the same thing to your kids more than once? Ever? Has that ever happened? Right? He just keeps saying, "Just listen son, get it. I want you to get it."

And after about eight chapters of this, something really interesting happens. It's time for this kid, for this young man, to step out into the big bad world. At which point these abstractions of wisdom and folly, they take on some very alluring shapes.

We've spoken about this repeatedly for the last two months, but what do you think is most likely to capture a young man's attention, in particular as he is coming of age? A girl, right? What are women, right? What are we more interested in than that?

And so wisdom is personified in this story as a woman. She is beautiful and she is promising to him happiness. She stands at the crossroads of his life and says, "Follow me and I will give you the delight of your heart." And for this young man, it is the prize, it is the jackpot.

But not so fast. Because there is a second woman who also appears, and she is alluring. She stands at the crossroads too.

She makes the same promise but she has a different way to get there. She says things like stolen water is sweet. To which perhaps the young man thinks, it is? How sweet? How would I do this? She says, my husband is gone and my bed is perfumed. To which this young man perhaps thinks, that is potentially very good news.

And as we watch the story play out, there's this tension of what's he gonna do? Which woman will he pursue? Will he go after wisdom? Will he pursue folly? What choice is he going to make? And there's dramatic tension—interesting happens, the women vanish from sight. From this point on there's no more wisdom and folly personified as wisdom. Instead there's choice after choice after choice. And this garb that they have taken on, this feminine appearance just kind of fades away. But be assured that wisdom and folly are still there, they're just far more subtle, they're in disguise.

One of them invites them to speak harshly, just force your way. But another speaks of the benefit of a gentle word. One shows him the benefit—the easy money really—in taking advantage of the poor. Whereas the other one exhorts him to give to the poor. One of these voices says, just hit the snooze bar, sleep in, it's fine. And another speaks to him of the virtue of diligence and hard work. One of them says, just say it, say it quickly, just get it done, let's move on. And another says, slow down, quietly consider your words.

No women, just choices. But on every page, the unspoken question is, what will he choose? What's he gonna do?

The Organization of Proverbs as a Reflection of Life

Now this is the point of the story where it's very easy to get lost or it stops seeming like a story because it's honestly incredibly disorganized. For the next 20 chapters, it's just like bam bam bam bam bam bam. It's not as if there's a chapter on anger and a chapter on money and a chapter—it's not organized like that. It's just this hodgepodge of stuff.

And as I've pondered, like, why would it be organized in a way that it's actually disorganized? And what's the wisdom of a story that kinda just descends into chaos like that? And if you don't mind my saying so, I think it's disorganized like that because our lives are disorganized like that.

If I were to ever say to you, hey listen up, you have a massive decision to make. On the right fork is wisdom, on the left fork is folly, what'll it be? It's a reasonably good chance that you might get it right. Not certain, but it's possible. But the reality is, have you ever noticed that that is not the way life works?

The decisions should come at you fast. You are choosing wisdom or folly well before you even realize there was a choice to be made. When you woke up today, you did not know—you still don't know—the snap judgment that you're gonna make about how you respond to your husband later today. You are not aware of the thing that you've already forgotten about that's gonna bite you in the rear at 3:30. You are not actively preparing for the fight that is just gonna bloom out of nowhere in your conversation with your mom later on. You simply did not get an advanced copy of the agenda. It's just coming.

And your life is like the book of Proverbs. They just come rapid fire. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. And it's not even as if one day is all about this topic, and then the next day is all about this topic so you get better at it. It's just it comes as it comes.

But if there was an audience to your life, if somebody was standing outside the thing watching it happen, even as we are the audience to this young man's life, they might be thinking, oh, well what's she gonna do? They might see the fork that you aren't even quite conscious of and they watch and they go, he blew it, I knew it, rookie mistake, he keeps doing that, right? This could be the case if we're watching our lives.

In fact, even just think about the last seven days. Go back, give yourself a week. Scan the week. What'd you do on Monday? What was Tuesday like? Are there decisions that you can see back? I had to take the fork. Which fork did I choose?

Maybe some of the time you chose the right fork. And maybe you've already begun to experience the goodness that flows out of your life. Or maybe it's like years away. A lot of times decisions have long term impacts. Or maybe there are things that you are just very glad there was no film camera, no film crew there to capture it. Because if we had the highlight reel of your bonehead decisions, it would just be miserable.

Or maybe it's not the last decision but the next decision. Will it be wisdom or folly? Which woman's song has been more alluring to you this week? That's the question that I think Proverbs invites us to consider.

Now back to our young man. When we go through Proverbs, when we read this book, we watch the story, we watch what the father is doing with him and how he's taking it all. There is this tension. What will he choose? To which woman is he going to unite his life? Will he choose wisdom?

Will he choose folly? Does he heed his father's call to embrace lady wisdom? Or does the siren song of folly prove to be just too much? To answer that question, all we really need to do is look at the end of the story, which is Proverbs 31. Like all good stories, this one ends well, and our young man makes his choice.

And this perhaps is where the kaleidoscope might turn for you. You guys might remember that throughout the book he's been made all these promises, all these exhortations, all these statements, and it says in chapter three of Proverbs:

Whatever you do, find wisdom, for she is more precious than rubies. — Proverbs 3

Whatever you do, find her. She's more precious than rubies. This poem of Proverbs 31 doesn't start at verse one, it starts down in verse 10. So skip down there. Listen to this and hear the echo:

An excellent wife, who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. — Proverbs 31:10

That sound familiar? That young man was told in Proverbs three to trust the Lord. And in chapter fourteen and twenty one he's told that all hard work, diligent planning brings gain. We find out here in Proverbs thirty one eleven:

The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. — Proverbs 31:11

He was promised in eleven twenty three:

The desires of the righteous end only in good. — Proverbs 11:23

And here in chapter 31, we're shown that the one that he has chosen does him good and not harm all the days of her life. He was told over and over again through the proverbs that the wise are diligent. And the Proverbs 31 woman is vividly diligent. She works incredibly hard. He was exhorted repeatedly that the wise lend to the poor. And this bride that he chooses is one who opens her hands to the poor and reaches out to the needy.

You guys, we could continue this through every line of Proverbs 31. Every line is an echo of the promises made about wisdom. And this is where it's going to get very strange for you, women that have heard this taught a dozen times.

The Woman of Proverbs 31 is Lady Wisdom

The woman of Proverbs 31 is not just any wife. She's not an idealized wife. She is not you, and you are not her. She is unquestionably lady wisdom. And the young man of Proverbs chose well.

Proverbs is a story about a young man whose father longs for him to choose the path of wisdom. And as he comes of age, two very different women make identical promises to him. But one of them is lying and life comes at him fast. It's dizzying as it comes. The choices are stark, but it doesn't mean that choices are easy. In fact, very often the choices are very difficult. We know, we get it. Wisdom is better than folly. And yet, folly so often seems better.

And over and over and over again, he faces a choice. What's he going to do? Which fork will he take? Which woman will win his heart? But when we flip to the end of the story we find that he has made his choice and he has chosen wisdom and he unites himself to her. And when he does, all of the incumbent blessings of wisdom flow into his life. That is the story, the narrative of Proverbs.

Is It Your Story?

Now the question is, is it your story? What decisions are you making? You also, by the way, have a father who loves you, who wants you to thrive, who wants you to prosper, and who comes to you and speaks to you, and he calls you and invites you to make the right decision on a regular basis.

Questions like, will you prioritize worshiping with the people of God? Or will you spend another weekend at the lake? Will you foster good relationships at work with your clients, with your colleagues, such that your life is one you're just giving yourself away to those whom you serve and those whom you serve with? Or is it all about getting all that you can and clocking out the second that the bell rings?

Are you going to be selfish and self-contained? Or will you give yourself away? Will you teach your children through your words and your actions that the number one priority in life is sports, or will you do the long, slow, plodding work to shape their loves such that they might prize and treasure Jesus? Will you lay up treasure in heaven or spend it all on things that moth and rust destroy? Have you married wisdom or do you share a bed perfumed though it be with folly?

If it's with folly, if you've chosen the wrong path, folly over wisdom, then be of good cheer because this is the one marriage that you're allowed to break. You may divorce this woman. Break it off. God invites us over and over again, get off the wrong path. Get on the right path and take the better fork that's always available. That's what's going on in Proverbs. That's what's going on in Proverbs 31.

Now, let me pause. To all of you women that have heard this taught very differently 300 times and you're like, well, I don't even know what to think anymore. So let me talk to you for a second. Man, you guys, you can listen in but I'm going to talk to them.

I know you've heard Proverbs 31 taught as the obligation upon you to behave in a certain way. It's possible that those messages have been inspiring to you—they give you something to shoot for, something that excites you. It's also possible that they've put you under a hideous pile that you hate. Either of these is possible.

The risk of that approach to the book of Proverbs, to Proverbs 31, to all of scripture, is that when we read it moralistically, very often one of two things happens. Besides missing the point of Proverbs or whatever passage of scripture you're reading, a moralistic reading either produces an arrogant self-righteousness because we feel like we've met some standard and we congratulate ourselves on how lovely we are. Or it produces this sense of despair: I can't do it. I didn't do it yesterday. I can't do it today. I'm sure not gonna do it tomorrow.

These two options—arrogant self-righteousness and crushing despair—neither of these are what the scriptures are inviting us to.

You Are Not the Woman of Proverbs 31

Here's the thing: You're not the woman of Proverbs 31. You're not. And it's okay that you're not. The woman of Proverbs 31 is unquestioningly Lady Wisdom. You are not expected to be her in all of her perfections. Rather, you are exhorted to unite yourself to her and reap all of her benefits.

Now this is a little bit weird. The Bible does weird things with gender, okay? Not the same weird things with gender that our culture is doing in its present moment of complete insanity—different weird stuff with gender, okay? Men and women together, we are the bride of Christ. That's strange for the dudes. You're like, what does that even mean? The good news is you're not brides. Although you are wearing a white dress. So there is that.

Men and women together are the bride of Christ. In a similar way, men and women together are the sons of God. Sometimes we'll try to make this gender inclusive and say we are the sons and daughters of God. You don't want that. In the culture that the scriptures were written, it's the sons that get the inheritance. It's the sons that inherit everything. When we say that women are included in the sonship that we have in Christ, you wanna keep it just like that: women are partakers along with the men of all that the sons inherit.

In a similar way, men and women here in Proverbs together are exhorted or invited not to be wisdom, but to marry wisdom and to unite our lives to wisdom.

Ladies, I really want you to hear this because I don't want you to feel burdened or excluded. I don't like either one of those. The main character of Proverbs is male. It's a young boy, the son of his father. And it's the son who's being exhorted to choose wisdom. It would be very strange if this whole book is telling the son what to do, and at the very end of it, the main character just flips and now suddenly it's this woman who's getting everything right. That's not the way the book works.

That male character is choosing a bride. Will he choose wisdom or will he choose folly? By the time we get to chapter 31, we know the answer—he chooses well. He chooses the bride that is wisdom. But that male character throughout the book stands in for men and for women. Ladies, you are included in this son who is getting ready to choose a bride. It is men and women together as we walk through this world making rapid choices. All of humanity, male and female, we are making the choices of to whom will we unify ourselves? Where are we going? Male or female, the imperative of our lives is to choose wisdom.

Because hear this: the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. What that means is that as we choose wisdom, we are choosing him. And if we reject him, we are also rejecting wisdom.

Wisdom Became Jesus

Now if the male-female thing is not complicated enough, here's what's crazy. Proverbs consistently pictures wisdom as a woman and folly as a woman. When wisdom actually came to the earth and became a human being, it was a man. It was Jesus. The metaphor does flip at that point.

When we unite ourselves to wisdom, we are uniting ourselves to him. He has become for us wisdom from God. He is our righteousness and our holiness and our redemption.

And the great hope, the great need of our lives is that he would draw us to himself, that we'd be united to him, and that we would reap all the benefits and all the blessings that come from being married to, as it were, the one who is wisdom. So be of good cheer. Whatever pressure you felt to be this person, you can't. That's not the plan. You're not—we are not to be a self-righteous people. We are people who have an imputed, gifted, granted righteousness. His wisdom becomes our wisdom as we unite ourselves to him. Dig it? Got it? Alright. Let's pray.

Jesus, we love you. We lift you up. We exalt you. We sing songs to you. We bend our lives around you because you are everything good. Lord, I pray for these men and women. Lord, would you make us to be a people that are wise? Would you unite our lives to wisdom? Would you help us to make the right choice—to choose the fork that begins by fearing you and ends with all joy and all delight? Would you let us be soft in your hands to see your greatness and your majesty and your power, and to delight in all that you give to us. We love you. Amen.