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At Game Night, there was a description of our Hebrew Bible lesson this morning. Namely, “A virtuous woman as defined by old Jewish men.”¹This description is funny because it is true.² As a woman working on gay rights issues in Myanmar put it this week, “The perspectival bias in biblical hermeneutics is unquestionably patriarchal, and gender discrimination has been traditionally derived from the Bible — written by men, for men, with little consideration given to the lives of women. Likewise, same-sex behavior receives marginal attention in the Bible; when mentioned, the primary concern is to protect the prerogatives of males, for whom any experience of “effeminization” undermines their status.³ Therefore, a description of a “capable wife” found in the Bible is likely to have a gender bias. The woman is a paragon of perfection, and she’s successfully made the rest of us feel guilty ever since they dreamed her up.

Luckily, there is a lot more going on in this text than initially meets the eye. Scholars don’t think that “capable” is a great translation in the opening line “A capable wife who can find?” (Proverbs 31:10a) According to Dr. Kathleen O’Connor, professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, the description of the woman “is more literally a ‘strong woman,’ a ‘woman of worth,’ a ‘warriorlike woman.’”⁴ And there are some strange things going on with the poem, ones that might lead to some big questions. O’Connor says, “Proverbs 31:10-31 is an acrostic poem, arranged in alphabetical order, each line beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The presence of the acrostic, combined with language repeated from earlier poems about personified wisdom, suggests that this woman is more than the average mortal.”⁵To be more direct, the poem is at least about a woman who is living out Wisdom. It is more likely about Wisdom as personified as a woman. At most Wisdom is, like Logos, an aspect of the Divine personified. The so-called ‘capable wife,” O’Connor says, “may not be God in this poem – a much debated point – but she works for her followers as if she were.”⁶

OHHHHH. This much quoted text about the perfect woman might be about the PERFECT woman, the embodiment of God as a woman. I feel less guilty already, and I’m not even a wife. There are some little clues that may support this theory. O’Connor says, “Rather than the woman praising her family, her family praises her, thus reversing gender expectations of the ancient world.”⁷ Praise is most frequently due to God in Biblical literature. The praise itself also sounds extraordinary, “Many woman have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” (Proverbs 31:29). Not just anyone can be the very best. There is the obvious factor that no human being could do and be all that is suggested, and the fact that the woman described is quite unusually wealthy and powerful, and her care for the poor and vulnerable, and her wisdom. She is described as “more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10b) which is interesting when the Bible tends to think God is the being of highest value – as in God’s decrees are more precious than gold in Psalm 19:10. And, quite curiously, her physicality is given no description. All of those lean us toward one of the interpretations that suggest that this woman is “more than just a woman.”

As she is either Wisdom as woman or God’s Wisdom as woman, she is NOT the standard against which other women are to be judged. Another scholar suggested, “it is not likely that all of these admirable traits, characteristics, and accomplishments will be found in one person…[what] looks like the portrayal of a single wonder woman is actually a composite of some of the ways that women make a difference.”⁸ I slightly disagree with him though. If we want to take this Wisdom-God-Woman as a composite, then wouldn’t it be of all people? Wouldn’t this be a Hebrew Bible version of what becomes for Christians the Body of Christ? It is a description of what all of us are capable of being when we work together for God and therefore also a description of what God is up to in the world.

How does sound then? God at work in the word is: trustworthy, hardworking, focused on feeding her people, thoughtful, strong, prepared, generous, well-dressed, empowering of others, able to create beautiful things of great value, dignified, full of laughter, kind, joyful, and worthy of praise! Yep. That sounds like God, and what we are able to do together at our best! That suggests that each of us is meant to provide one or a few of the aspects of this Wisdom-God-Woman as our gift to the world, but NONE of us are meant to provide all of them.

If this interpretation is true, however Wisdom and God and the “capable wife” are interrelated, the text is unexpectedly female-positive. There are other places in the Bible where God is compared to a woman, but I don’t know of any texts that are such an extended metaphor of God conceived in the feminine. It is a rather profound upheaval of expectations about how God is understood. Women were not of high value or power in those ancient times, and comparing God to a woman either weakens God or strengthens women. I’d hope it is the latter!

When I bought my house last year I made a joke that as a white, adult, landowner there was only one thing that would have kept me from being able to vote when we became a country (my gender). I’m glad to live today. My humanity is recognized and accepted and I have powers in the world that my sisters from previous generations would not have deemed possible. The idea that only wealthy white men could vote in our country (for a LONG TIME) sometimes hurts my head, but it also makes sense out of the battles we’re still struggling with. When we became a country full humanity was only granted to wealthy white men. Thanks be to God that the definitions have changed, and culture is going to catch up eventually!

Biblically, this went a step further than it did in early US history. A man’s household was his property: his wife, his children, his servants. In the Gospel, Jesus starts playing with the ideas and roles of servants and children. Rev. Dr. Sharon Ringe is a professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary, and a contributor to Feasting on the Word. She says succinctly, ”Competition for power, wealth, and prestige infected all cultures included in the Roman Empire.”⁹ (Which makes it part of the world as I’ve known it.) According to our text, the disciples were people who existed in a pretty normal culture and all wanted to be the best! After all, following an religious/moral teacher can become a source of pride. It could lead to one thinking one is better than others who don’t follow one’s teacher. And if one’s teacher is Jesus directly, it seems reasonable one might want to feel good about it, and then even feel most justified than then next disciple.

There is a lot to be said for being the best in most cultures! Yet the entire Gospel lesson today suggests that following Jesus is NOT about being the best. This is why it is particularly helpful that we’ve eliminated the need to be the “best” woman/wife with our work with Proverbs. In the text Jesus stakes a claim of having a unique role with God when he says he is the “Son of Man” but he then explains that his unique role is going to get him killed. It may be a good time to remember that the Jews had been awaiting a Messiah for 5 centuries or so, and they expected him to bring them political, social, military, and financial status. He wasn’t supposed to go and get killed. That in and of itself is reversal of the type that might be understood as the first being last.

Jesus’s responses to the disciples fighting of their greatness continues the same theme. Ringe writes, “The words translated in the NRSV of verse 35 as ‘servant’ is diakonas. While that word came to refer to a person in ministry, in the Greek of Jesus’ and Mark’s day it meant someone who served meals. The person who was ‘servant of all’ was the lowest in rank of all the servants – the one who would be allowed to eat only what was left after everyone else had eaten their fill.”¹⁰ Isn’t that an interesting take on ministry itself? Soon there after there is a strange transition from the disciples being expected to be servants to them being expected to be like children. This is another case where translation fails us. The word for servant and the one for child are very similar. Ringe continues, “Mark’s audience would have heard the word ‘child’ as referring to someone like the servant who served meals to everyone else in the household, in that both were seen as without ‘honor’ or high social standing.”¹¹Then, “Not only is Jesus himself said to honor and welcome a mere child (v. 36), but the saying in verse 37 equates one’s welcome of such a child with welcoming Jesus himself.”¹²

That is, according to Dr. Martha L. Moore-Keith of Columbia Theological Seminary, “Jesus first calls the disciples to emulate the child, thus renouncing social status; he then calls them to welcome the child, to make space for those with no social status, since to do so is to welcome Jesus himself- and the One who sent him.”¹³ It works quite well as a continuation of the idea that they are to be like servants, doesn’t it? The entire Gospel lesson is a set of inversions about what it means to be great. The first shall be last and the last shall be first, indeed. Children, and servants come first. Jesus and the disciples are last.

When we add in Proverbs, we see that the standard of perfection isn’t intended to be met by human beings. The best and perfect wife is an expression of Wisdom and/or God. She isn’t the best, she’s out of the competition. She’s isn’t the goal. She’s the expression of what we can all do together.

God doesn’t seem too interested in our definitions of who or what matters. Isn’t it great? It gives us a lot of freedom: to care about what really matters and not what is “supposed to matter”, to let go of the quest for perfection and leave that for God, to get on with the work of living and helping others live, to do our own parts of the work of the Body of Christ and trust that others will do the same and God will build it up toward good – that is, to let go of trying to be first and just be! With God, we aren’t in a competition. Thanks be to God! Amen

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1 “A Game for Good Christians.” Expansion Deck: Wisdom Literature.
2 All humor is funnier when it has to be explained, right?
3 Molly T. Marshall “Religios Freedom and Human Rights” published September 25, 2015 by Baptist Global News. Accessed athttps://baptistnews.com/opinion/columns/item/30483-religious-freedom-and-human-rights on September 19, 2015.
4 Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective on Proverbs 31:10-31” in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009). page 75.
5 O’Connor, page 75.
6 O’Connor, page 79.
7 O’Connor, page 79.
8 H. James Hopkins, “Homiletical Perspective on Proverbs 31:10-31” inFeasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009)., page 77.
9 Sharon H. Ringe, “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 9:30-37”, in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009), page 95.
10 Ringe, page 95
11 Ringe, page 97.
12 Ringe, page 97.
13 Martha L. Moor-Keish, Theological Perspective on Mark 9:30-37, in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009), page 96.
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Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady