Proverbs 31 pt.2

Proverbs 31:10 reads: "Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies."

As a Christian wife and Mom I want to be a precious treasure like the verse talks about. Being virtuous is obviously the key, but I wasn't completely sure what I thought virtuous meant. I checked another translation and it said "excellent". Well, virtuous sounds to me like extremely morally good, and excellent sounds like good grades in school. Either way I fall short. I decided to check the Hebrew because sometimes you can tell alot about a word by finding out what else it is translated as. What I found was fascinating.

The Hebrew word CHAYIL is used about 240 times in the Old Testament, but only 5 times in reference to women. It is actually a "man" word. Most commonly it is translated as the word "army" or a word that refers to an army, like "force" or "host". Second most common was the word valour or valiant (depending how it was used in the verse) referring specifically to bravery in battle. David is referred to a valiant man in 1Sam. 16:18. The men who rescued Saul and Jonathan's bodies from the Philistines, who had them on display, are called valiant men. As you can probably guess, the third most common translation are words like "might", "strength", and "power". ie "It is God who arms me with strength, and makes my way perfect." Ps.18:32

So, Who can find a valiant, strong army of a woman? An interesting picture comes to mind, and one which is totally different than what I thought this mother was saying to her son. Why the picture of a brave warrior for a wife to treasure?

Today we need women of valor, brave and mighty in the Lord, who hold their children and their homes for Jesus. Home, family and marriage are all under siege. To defeat the enemies of self, the world and the devil, a Christian woman needs to be strong in the Lord. She needs to spend time with God, know the Word, live the Word, and pray.

The world has a million definitions of what a woman should be and just as many distractions to keep her from being the strong soldier the Lord calls her to be. It is so easy to be drawn away from what's really important and eternal to focus instead on the temporal and the trivial. Externals are irrelevant. Your beauty will fade, and your body will droop (gravity is a cruel master). Focusing on such things is like worrying about the bag your purchases are in rather than opening the bag and removing the treasure within. ( Of course there are stores that think women really care about the bag they take their purchases home in.... but they are also often stores that exploitively want women to believe that externals are what is important.) Your body is the bag you live in. Don't pay too much attention to it.

I said the word CHAYIL is used 5 times of women, twice in Prov. 31(vs. 10 and 29), Prov. 12:4, and twice in the book of Ruth. In Ruth 3:11 Boaz says of Ruth, " all the city of my people know that you are a virtuous woman." Ruth is the only named woman in Scripture referred to as virtuous. She left her people, her homeland, her family, to follow her mother-in-law Naomi back to Israel because she believed in the one true God. She worked in the fields gleaning the leavings of the reapers to feed Naomi and herself. She submitted to Naomi's plan for her to marry a much older man to provide home and substance for them. Those are all soldierly valiant decisions and the proof is in the results. Ruth is the great-grandmother of King David "a man after God's own heart". Ruth's family held for the kingdom for generations and she is the matriarch of that family, though her predecessors were pagan. This valiant woman from a heathen land is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus.

Prov. 12:4 "A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that causes shame is like rottenness in his bones." I'd always thought of this verse in the context of goodness or moral purity, and surely an immoral woman would be a devestation as a wife. The picture here though is of a brave, valiant woman. The bones are the structure of the body, and rotten bones would cause weakness and collapse. A woman who stands strong in her relationship with the Lord and is faithful in her family to live the Word and teach the Word to her children provides a strong framework for her husband to lead. If she did not, the family would rot from within.

The admonition from the start of this chapter then is for the son to seek out a warrior of a wife. I had a dear sister in the Lord ask me in service about how this looks in practical life. I gave a pretty inane answer because I'm not very quick on my feet (especially when the mike is shaking). I realized later that the answer is an unexpected one. God is most often in the little things and uses those to build big things in our lives. In the chapter so much attention is given to her work, and that of course is the point. Anytime you chose the right thing instead of the easy thing you do battle. The work you do for your family matters. Choosing to cook instead of fast food, preparing ahead of time for their needs, and all the other small things you do for your family work together in God's plan to build a mighty family for Him. And that dear sisters takes a warrior woman.