A broken tulip

Did you think we were finished with Ruth? Almost.

There are a few things to clear up still. Maybe this is really just me venting a built-up frustration, grief really, for how casually we bottle these stories. Now that you’ve accompanied me this far, maybe you’re ready to hear it. We turn these stories into something they’re not, just so they’re tidy. But there is very little that is tidy or automatically moralistic in these stories that deal with real people, bloody wars, confusing words from God, and even more confusing—God’s silence.

Anyways. The book of Ruth is wrapped up as a convenient “love story” by some North American teachers and authors. Maybe you have heard them. Here’s how it goes: Boaz is the redeemer of Ruth, and so men should protect and care for the women they marry. And so Jesus came to redeem and cover us. (Bonus takeaway, this is the book of Biblical courtship.)

It’s not necessarily a bad takeaway, but I hope you’re spluttering a little over the simplicity of it, how it ignores large swaths of the story. Like, it completely leaves out Naomi, the one character the entire story revolves around. It ignores Ruth’s redemptive actions, specifically the fact that Ruth’s initial act of kindness was giving up the prospect of marriage. It even conveniently un-mentions the detail that Ruth is the one who seeks out Boaz and proposes. As a “courtship how-to”, or even as a God-came-to-save-us-like-Boaz, the bare basics of Ruth’s story don’t serve the pared down purpose it has been given.

Don’t let anyone evaporate this story and then give you the vapid steam above the pot as your inheritance. I hope you see that this one story holds the lives of multiple people, each of whom the story could be shaped around, depending how you tell it: Naomi, Ruth, Boaz. Perez. Salmon and Rahab. Abraham. Job. The list goes on.

Here is our final retelling: the Proverbs 31 woman.

Proverbs 31 is another passage used by well-meaning people (some of whose Bible studies I did as a child) who strip the verses of any contribution to the larger story and turn it into a how-to-be-a-Biblical-woman guide (although they also admit, with a little laugh, that if anyone actually did all of these things, she would never sleep).

Here’s my anecdotal evidence: the study I did as a young girl was well put together, and it was written by creative people. It came with a pipe cleaner kit to build dolls of “Ruby” (so named because “her worth is above rubies”) and her family. Ruby’s felt clothing was purple. We memorized the whole passage on index cards. I wrote a play, conscripted younger siblings and their friend to act, and we staged it for the local community: a day in the life of the Proverbs 31 woman.

So there’s no denying that Proverbs 31 was thoroughly taught to me in a way that allowed for creative expression (which is probably why that study stuck). There was always a direct and practical interpretation. I didn’t question that interpretation, but looking back it isn’t hard to see that I also didn’t find much compelling about it. In the play I gave myself the (mostly silent) role of father in the play (marker moustaches are a lot of fun). I turned my next generation of “Ruby dolls” into elves that hunted wolves with bows and arrows to protect their villages. And, faced with the daunting prospect that marriage necessarily implied a lifetime of housework (which I have never been good at), I strengthened my childhood resolve to never marry.

None of this set me back into the storyline of Scripture in any real or imaginative way. None of this equipped me to be a woman (beyond housework). Instead this study, and others like it, separated me from what I considered meaningful, which was involvement in the bigger story (my brothers, down the hall, were studying the end of the world in the book of Daniel, which seemed far more relevant than spinning wool and flax). I realize that saying this tells you something about the person I am. These studies, I expect, are good and helpful for others. I don’t mean to speak for everyone. But for me, these studies took the stories and passages of women out of the garden and out of the ecosystem to be flowers hung upside down on the wall and dried into a decoration. Pretty. Nostalgic. Dead.

If you’re here reading this, chances are you have felt the same way. Or you know someone who does. So let’s go back to the Proverbs 31 woman.

There were many years of silence between my childhood plunge into Proverbs 31 and the next piece I was given. I was at an extremely complementarian Christian university, and a Hebrew scholar was invited to speak at our chapel. Chapels were required, so my attention was only partially on the man who started to speak about Proverbs 31. He explained how that passage is the summary, the capstone, of everything that comes before in the book. So that once you’ve read it the book of Proverbs and you ask, what does wisdom mean? you read this hymn of praise. Everything that has been said becomes embodied in this woman you could meet on the street or be neighbours with. The Proverbs 31 woman, in other words, is wisdom.

Maybe it will surprise you that I shut down my roommate’s attempts to discuss this chapel. I walked away. The first interpretation of Proverbs 31 had been handed to me so certain, and I just didn’t want to risk pulling it out for another look.

That’s an understandable reaction. It’s also lazy.

The man’s words stuck like a bur, gentle but always present. And a bur gathers more and more of the clothing that brushes up against it.

Here was an interpretation of Proverbs 31 that leapt out of the page and rolled through the rest of the book, the rest of the canon—tugging at this, picking up that, crushing this, rubbing away that.

Here are a few more things I’ve learned:

There’s the obvious fact that the tradition which birthed the passage, the Jewish tradition, doesn’t use Proverbs 31 as a how-to, but as a hymn of praise memorized and sung by men over their wives at the close of every week.

And then there’s Ruth (were you waiting for this?). In the book of Ruth, Ruth is called a woman of valour by Boaz. Boaz is also called a man of valour. This “valour” word is what we might judge “masculine”. It is used repeatedly for war, for David and his mighty men. It was a pre-requisite for leadership and becoming a judge in Exodus. The fact that it is used to describe both Boaz and Ruth is a beautiful, poetic use of language. While the story shows that the economic power difference between them was huge, the story also tells those with ears to listen that when it came to Ruth and Boaz there was no difference in their valour. In character they are equal, and the whole land knew it.

Let that sit for a while.

Alright, back to this word ‘valour’ (Hebrew ‘chayil’). Only one other woman (other than Ruth) is described with this word in the Old Testament, and it’s the Proverbs 31 woman. Many English translations make that word into “excellent” – an excellent wife, who can find?

That has led many in the Jewish community to believe that Proverbs 31 is about Ruth. And really, it isn’t that far of a stretch—David, the great-grandson of Ruth, was so impacted by her story that her example and language naturally flowed into many of his Psalms. We don’t know when the story of Ruth was written down, but for it to be so polished (most of the times that Ruth speaks, it’s actually in poetry), it must have been told over and over. Solomon definitely had access to it. And why wouldn’t the life that inspired songs to God also inspire her great-great-grandson’s quest for wisdom?

I tried splitting up Proverbs 31 as introductions to the different chapters of the book of Ruth and it was a fascinating exercise, one I would recommend.

Besides the actual word ‘chayil’, there are many echoing themes in Proverbs 31 (like mention of the husband sitting in the gates, or the wife praised in all the land). Here’s one I love. Remember when we talked about the wings of God, and how Rahab (Ruth’s mother-in-law) covered the spies with flax to protect them?

The Proverbs 31 woman’s language is full of covering—her children, the merchants, the poor and needy. And in my favourite verse: She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.

That I found compelling in the Proverbs 31 woman, even as a child. That is a “definition of woman” wide enough to encompass all of us. It is also a description of wisdom that I believe both men and women hunger for in this time of pandemic and war. The book of Proverbs says is it is available to anyone who will sit at Wisdom’s table. You could be clothed with strength and dignity. You could laugh at tomorrow.

So we now have many different views on Proverbs 31: it is a blessing chanted over women by their husbands. An embodiment of all the wisdom teaching. A hymn that re-packages the life and story of Ruth.

If you sit with each of these, how do they stretch your heart and mind? What do you discover? Which do you think it is?

And what if the passage is all of these things? Wisdom is your birthright. Her table is yours. She is standing in the streets and calling for the weary to come to rest. You can rest in that blessing and seek out her covering. This is more than a metaphor. A real woman named Ruth embodied this wisdom and her life bent the course of human history into a brighter, more beautiful direction. She laid the threads that would be picked up by her children: the poet-king, the wise king, the servant king with a wisdom greater than Solomon.

A woman of valour, who can find?

Photo by Vonecia Carswell.