Proverbs 12:4 Commentary and Bible Study

The virtuous woman – what an interesting picture this is! The word translated virtuous means exactly what it says; it comes from the Hebrew for a force, actually an army. The word has this idea in it: somebody of very varied force and power, an army of different people. Here is this ideal wife, and she is above all things dedicated to the family. Her attitude is that she is all for her husband, her family; she is right behind them.Now the wife in olden times did some very sophisticated things. You read towards the end of the book of Proverbs that the ideal wife, in Solomon's estimation, looks after the buying and selling of land, and all manner of different things. In the home of ancient times there was the farm to be run on the one hand, and then there was the complex domestic side on the other hand, and probably it is a home with servants. The wife is responsible for the ordering of the whole outfit: the presentation of husband and children and all the clothing and everything, and hospitality. In the ancient east, hospitality was something of enormous importance, and the virtuous wife here stands behind the family in all these departments of life. She is characterised by diligence, hard work, planning, and wisdom in the way she manages her household, and faithfulness, compassion, and gentleness in the way she cares for the members of her household – her husband and her children. She can be relied upon to do what is right, and so her husband can trust her and leave her to care for many aspects of the running of the household, because he knows she is one hundred percent behind the family. By her conduct she brings him honour and so is called his crown, for she stands beside him as a helpmeet whose primary concern is to serve his interests and not her own. He has no concerns about her loyalty to him and so can dismiss from his mind all such thoughts. Those who know him appreciate how much good she does him and how much more he is able to achieve as a result their being joined together as one flesh. ‘But she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.’ This man has a wife and they too may have servants, but her mind is not on the job. Her mind is elsewhere. She does not want to be doing what she is doing, and it is an absolute shambles. The household is not organised, the servants if they have them are not properly inspired, instructed or regulated. And what happens is the household is a mess, so that the husband says, ‘I am the shame of the neighbourhood. I give hospitality infrequently. We do not pull our weight, and when we do, everything goes wrong, everything is a shambles, and look how we are all turned out. We have got this land and this farm, and we ought to be doing pretty well, and yet we are like the paupers of the village’, and he is ashamed. The Hebrew word translated ‘ashamed’ means pales. He pales whenever people come, whenever people see the chaos they are in, and oh his wife, what has happened to her, she has become so slovenly, and they are so disgraced. Maybe she is even shaming him in that she is unfaithful, or she is the gossip of the village. She is as rottenness in his bones. The rottenness is literally decay, like toothache, gnawing pain going right down in your bones.