I've Been Thinking About This…

You might argue that a man has 2 fathers – a biological one and a spiritual one. The biological one can be the best he can be; prudent as all get-up; a great teacher and a wonderful example to follow. Where tangible gifts are concerned, however, the best he can ever pass on is still just ‘stuff’ – and sometimes there’s a lot to pass on, sometimes not.

The heavenly Father has a higher dimension to His giving – more than mere ‘things’, He can arrange for the gift of a spouse who is both a match for our temperament and a complement for our competences; and it’s only together that we both have and can create life in its full abundance.

While on the one hand we should see this as applying to both sexes, and the gift for a woman would perhaps be a prudent husband as well, we should on the other hand also recognize that the reader is expected to think back through Scripture to see who might qualify as the prudent wife of the verse. There we meet women such as Rahab (Heb 11:31), Ruth (Ruth 2:2), Hannah (1 Sam 2:1) and Abigail (1 Sam 25:3). Lord spare us from Rebekah (read of her deceit in Gen 27) and Michal (her scorn in 2 Sam 6:20), not to mention the women who arrived after this book was written – Athaliah (2 Kings 11:1) and her mother Jezebel (2 Kings 9:22 – someone so thoroughly bad that she is considered the quintessence of that role by the time Rev 2:20 is written)!

Checking the context, we should also recognize that our verse follows this phrase, “a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.” The constant bickering of the wife described in v. 13 is a continual reminder that she thinks of herself alone; she does not love her husband; she resents being married to him; she could have done better if she had made the choice in her right mind, and so on and so on and so on. Tiring just to write of it! What a living nightmare to have to exist with someone who finds fault at every turn! And of course, let’s not forget that the problem can apply with a husband as well as a wife.

The other side of the coin was found in the previous chapter:

… someone who can join with a man and turn a life into Living. It’s the human equivalent of making a house a home. This sentiment of the ideal wife is to be found throughout most of the final chapter of Proverbs (Prov 31:10-31) as well.

Libraries have been written on the subject – what am I supposed to say in a few paragraphs?

There is one thing I would add, though, and it is this: we would do well to ask ourselves what it was that brought about this contentiousness in the quarrelsome wife. Did it happen in a vacuum? Had the husband no part in it? It’s never appropriate to declare brokenness in another person and so condemn them. We need to dig deeper, because even if we aren’t the ‘breaker’, we might be part of the problem that stops them from mending. In which case, we need to own up to it, apologize and start fixing matters.

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