Proverbs 31:29 Commentary and Bible Study

So she ran the home in that sense and it was a complex function. She was responsible for everything: aesthetic things, the appearance of the home, the raw materials that were to be obtained, the cloth to be made or bought, the fabrics, fittings, and fixtures on display, the functioning of the home, the family wardrobe; there were so many things in those days. She was responsible obviously for the family diet, the table, the domestic servants, the programme of hospitality (and hospitality was enormously important in the East, and still is). She was responsible for much of the food making: so much food had to be preserved and the larder kept supplied, and she had to be on top of all the logistics of just precisely what would be needed in all those months of the year when it could not be picked fresh or harvested. We just don't worry about these things in modern times, life is nothing like complex as it was years and years ago.She was responsible for the family care and health. She was responsible obviously for relationships within the growing family and for their education. Until it came to the father's turn to take them off into the trade or into the farm. They would go to the synagogue school, if it was not too far away, for religious education and they would be educated otherwise in the home and everything depended in those days upon the mother. That was her role and it is in the context of that picture that we read: ‘Every wise woman buildeth her house’ (Proverbs 14:1). She takes a long-term view. She looks ahead and she makes a lot of sacrifices. She puts the health and education and clothing of her children before anything she desires, any fixtures she may want, any luxuries, any pleasantries. She is responsible and she will naturally know how to order priorities in the best interests of all and for the family. So, a wise woman builds her house, and she will see the children up through youth, up to the time they leave home – and in the ancient east they are still hanging round her even when they are middle-aged. She will be the matriarch, the head of the great and extended family still with heavy responsibilities of family peace-keeping and the programme of hospitality. A wise woman has a policy and she knows what things to put first. For all these things and for many known only to the family, she is praised.