Is it time for a feminist thread on Proverbs 31/Eshet Chayil? Yes, yes it is.

Proverbs 31 has been used to demean women by telling us that we're not good enough unless we're superheroes. I want to suggest an alternative reading.

Prov 31 is often read as saying that worthy women are rare, then describing an impossibly high standard that women, in fact, can't actually live up to. We're human beings. No one can do everything Prov 31 praises — and I don't think it's saying that we should.

The part of Prov. 31 that's used this way starts with verse 10:
JPS 1985: "Prov. 31:10 What a rare find is a capable wife!
Her worth is far beyond that of rubies."
KJV: Prov. 31:10 ¶ Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

In liturgical translations, I've also often seen it rendered "a woman of valor who can find", which is a bit closer to capturing the meaning of the word: חיל means strength, in the sense of ability, moral virtue, military might, wealth, etc.)

Prov. 31:1 attributes itself to "The words of Lemuel, king of Massa, with which his mother admonished him".

I think that, perhaps, Lemuel was not a reliable narrator, and that he may not have listened to his mother as well as he thought he did.

King Lemuel hears his mother's words as meaning that women worth respecting are rare — and that he should therefore err on the side of avoiding women in the same way that he should avoid strong drink. I'm not sure she meant it that way.

I choose to read Ps 31 with the assumption that King Lemuel's mother (whose name no one bothered to record) knew that men often unjustly devalue women's work and disregard women's virtues.

If you look at the plain meaning of Prov. 31:10, she doesn't actually say that it's rare for women to *be* valorous, she says that it's rare for men to *find* valorous women.

Women are, in fact, valuable whether or not men seen our value.

Read with the assumption that Lemuel's mother valued women, Prov. 31 asks "Who can find a valorous woman?" and answers "People who are *looking* and bothering to notice all of the hard work women are doing."

Prov. 31 isn't a checklist of impossibly high standards for women to live up to as a precondition of being worth bothering with. It's a list of *examples* of women whose virtues men may not be respecting appropriately.

If you assume that Lemuel's mother is a misogynist, 12-13 say that women's value lays in serving their husbands flawlessly. If you assume she values women, then she's telling off men for not valuing all the things their wives do for them.

The word חיל in almost every other place it occurs refers to male-coded forms of power. Unusually, Lemuel's mother includes women's labor in the category of valorous work:
"Prov. 31:13 She looks for wool and flax,
And sets her hand to them with a will."

Lemuel's mother is able to see women's art and decorative efforts as worth praising:

Prov. 31:22 She makes covers for herself;
Her clothing is linen and purple.
Prov. 31:25 She is clothed with strength and splendor;
She looks to the future cheerfully.

Lemuel's mother describes women as experts worth taking seriously:

"Prov. 31:26 Her mouth is full of wisdom,
Her tongue with kindly teaching."

Lemuel's mother makes the surprisingly radical statement that women should get credit for their work and that people should praise it in public:

"Prov. 31:31 Extol her for the fruit of her hand,
And let her works praise her in the gates."

Perhaps when King Lemuel's mother admonished him "do not give your valor to women", she meant "because they have their own, and trying to replace it with yours will not end well."

Or, as one woman of valor put it: https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/796394920051441664

/thread