The Virtuous Woman

(For all those women who have read the description of the Proverbs 31 woman and been incredibly frustrated... this is for you.)
Last year as I was working on my book about the feminine side of God I encountered the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 in an all new light. As I delved into this woman’s character I realized she was not who I had traditionally understood her to be, but was so much more. Since I was writing a book about femininity using the entirety of Scripture I did not have as much time as I would have liked to expound on the virtuous woman directly. The last several months the women of my church have been going through a study on the women of the Bible and one of the chapters is dedicated entirely to the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31. This week we finally arrived at her chapter and I must admit the emptiness of her presentation greatly annoyed me. And so I am compelled to write more about her since I believe we have sorely misunderstood who this woman is and who her image impacts.

My first question, which was not adequately answered was, “Why include this description at all?” The study explained it as a means for women to understand what is desirable to God in a woman and secondly what a man should look for in finding a wife. Both those reasons I happen to agree with but they do not go deep enough and do not answer the most important question – Why? Why does God desire for woman to carry these characteristics? The answer was simple for me in light of the writings I felt inspired to write last year but I have never heard anyone else say them. I will start answering the question by asking a question. In all the history of mankind have you ever seen or known God to exalt or honor characteristics that are not first and foremost His own? The answer is – no! So we must conclude firstly that these are characteristics of God and secondly that they were the motivation behind His design of Eve when He created her in His image in the beginning. With this understanding we must now define these characteristics and search Scripture for their direct application to God. Fortunately we do not have very far to go since King Solomon wrote extensively about the feminine side of God and we find most of it in Proverbs. What I have put together in the following chart is a list of the verses concerning the virtuous woman and then compared them to the correlating verses that speak of the same characteristics in God.





The most clarifying component of this chart is the understanding of why this woman is so difficult to attain or become. If God took all of His feminine goodness and invested it into a physical form, this is what she would look like. I believe this was God’s intent when creating Eve but because of our now fallen nature we look a lot more like Folly than we do this woman Wisdom. And that’s the down and dirty truth of it. We sinned and personified Folly. When God scolded Adam for listening to Eve it was not because men should never listen to women. Adam was scolded because he listened to Folly and not Wisdom. Eve spoke out of a fallen nature and therefore spoke Folly. This carries support throughout Proverbs as Wisdom says over and over, “Listen to my words.” Naturally if you listen to the words of Wisdom it is not wrong, and if a woman is properly personifying Wisdom then she is worthy to be listened to. Where the wrong enters the picture is when you lack the discernment to recognize Wisdom from Folly. If you are not aware of whom Folly is you may find her also in Proverbs. Her name in Hebrew is Ivveleth; I call her “Poison Ivy” for short… how appropriate. She mocks and mimics Chokmah, or Wisdom, twisting and corrupting her character.

The question remains: why include these virtues if they are unattainable? Well… at the time this was written, that was the simple truth; these characteristics, although they were God’s standard, were unattainable. But now we have Christ who is born within us and cultivates godly characteristics and virtues in our lives every day. This woman is no longer beyond our reach but she still takes a lot of time and effort to arrive at and one may only find her through Christ. How many times do you read through the various fruits of the Spirit and not stop and think, “Hey, I could definitely use some more ___________”? The virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 is the same concept. We will always be lacking but through Christ we can attain more and more of her character.

Now we come to the question of who her image impacts. The virtuous woman, being a physical reflection of the femininity God possesses, impacts all things feminine. That means she defines me as a physical woman. She defines the emotions (feminine in relation to the masculine mind) of all mankind. She defines the souls (feminine in relation to the masculine heart) of mankind. She defines even the bride – the Church. And so we must look upon this virtuous woman of Proverbs in a slightly different light now. We must analyze how we as a Church are reflecting upon our groom, Jesus Christ. Can we as a Church say we embody all of these characteristics? Do we clothe our family? Do we open our arms to the needy and poor? Are we good stewards and diligent with our resources? Do our actions cause Christ to be well known and respected at the city gates? If we do not, should we not then be focusing with great intent on being a virtuous bride? Is our goal not for the Spirit to look on us and proclaim, “She is ready. It is time for the groom to approach.” and then take our hand and in one voice make that most precious request, “Come, Lord Jesus.”? It bears some thought. The parting question I ask of anyone who would read this is how can you better incorporate these characteristics into not only the femininity you possess whether it is woman, emotion, or soul but also into the femininity of the bride of Christ – His Church?