Wisdom and Women

             Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice?  At the highest point along the way, where the paths meet, she takes her stand; beside the gate leading into the city, at the entrance,  she cries aloud: “To you, O people, I call out; I raise my voice to all mankind. You who are simple, gain prudence; you who are foolish, set your hearts on it. Listen, for I have trustworthy things to say; I open my lips to speak what is right. My mouth speaks what is true, for my lips detest wickedness. All the words of my mouth are just; none of them is crooked or perverse. To the discerning, all of them are right; they are upright to those who have found knowledge. Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her. (Proverbs 8:1-11)

How were women supposed to behave back in the time of Solomon? How does the Bible describe women as behaving when/if they behave themselves as they should? Think about Eve, Tamar, Rachel and Leah, Naomi and Ruth, Deborah, Jael, Rahab, Miriam, Abigail, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah, Mary,  Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, the woman at the well, the Syrophoenician woman, the woman with the flow of blood and the Proverbs 31 woman. I’m willing to bet that any named woman in the Bible you want to study probably did things outside of what we believe was considered appropriate, and chances are good that they were remembered and revered partly for their chutzpah.

If this were not the case, I would expect wisdom not to be personified as a woman, and not as the forward sort of woman described in Proverbs 8. I have read that the matriarch of the Jewish family effectively controlled the household, while the patriarch handled public affairs. I’ve heard Native American representatives say that at least some Native American cultures followed roughly the same private/public policy. I’ve also heard that Nordic and Celtic women were sometimes warriors, explorers, and rulers.

Two ideas come to mind. The first is that if women were supposed to be what we think they were supposed to be back then (and perhaps now), the writer of this passage was an absolute idiot. What man would want wisdom when  wisdom was so ill-behaved and domineering? The second is that strong women have always been appreciated, and if the writer wanted men to walk hand-in-hand with wisdom, there is no better description that could be given than a woman who could, in effect, go toe-to-toe with him. Put bluntly, Wisdom isn’t some wimpy, whiny little miss and she’s not going to follow any rules that some guy lays down just because he’s a guy, or even because he’s her guy.

In the same sense, the moment we try to make wisdom work according to our preferences, we’ll discover that we have a fight on our hands, and it’s a battle of wits we will not win.