Where Proverbs Meets Ecclesiastes
On women of valor and being angry at what I was taught to believe
Where Proverbs Meets Ecclesiastes
1 “A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies,”
2 he said to me1. I looked at the Chesapeake Bay before us.
“I will pursue her,” he said. I kept my eyes
3 on the Bay, that late afternoon sun burning
my legs. “A woman of virtue is worthy to pursue,”
4 he said. “You should let a guy pursue you,
April.” I looked down at my sandy feet, then back
5 at the Bay. This is what he wanted: infinite depths
of perfection, to drown in. That Proverbs 31
6 Woman, a checklist for what a perfect wife should be.
He will chase the tides across beaches, only to never find
7 her. He will not find his (sexually) pure, virtuous,
motherhood-bound woman, the one who waited, who prayed
8 and wrote letters to him in her journal, “Dear Future Husband…”
If he somehow finds this woman who fits into his God-
9 assigned gender roles, I hope his throat dries up. I hope one day
his sandcastle comes crashing down, swept by waves
10 of blood and salt, and there will be no water to save him then.
I hope his woman breaks away from his God and finds her own.
11 I hope that one day there will be no “Good Christian
Girls” left, all of us having escaped from the roles
12 that molded us, shaped us, made us check off each verse,
made us shame our bodies and sexualities—
13 I hope that one day we can all heal, that we finally feel at home
in our bodies, that we know they are not “stumbling blocks.”
14 When I was sitting on that beach, I did not know what to say.
I did not yet know Proverbs 31 was a celebration
15 of women, that it’s not a mandate for perfection.
I did not yet realize I wasn’t waiting for a man
16 to pursue me. So in that moment, I said
nothing.
17 This same boy told me he loved Ecclesiastes, once, loved its existentialism,
so fucking intellectual. But did he really read it?
18 His world is in Proverbs: the wicked “whores” and feminists lie in ruin
and the righteous, wise (rich, white men) receive their reward (a wife);
19 cause and effect are fixed, and everything happens for
a reason. But Ecclesiastes laughs in the face of this logic.
20 “Wicked” or “righteous,” “foolish” or “wise,” we all meet
the same fate in the end. Life is smoke slipping through our fingers.
21 We can’t break life down into formulas, we can’t make sense of
our imperfections. Wisdom, wealth, and a wife will not ensure happiness.
22 I find peace in the not-knowing, in learning
what is right for me, in my future not being rigid, but open.
23 I do not have to be pursued; I do not have to wait.
I can walk on my own and find love on the way,
24 on my own terms. I can enjoy where I am now, who I am now,
and not worry about fitting into a certain narrative.
25 This is how I break away from
those choking dogmatic fumes that still obscure my vision.
26 As I was sitting on that beach, I looked at the glittering
water, the blue sky.
27 Under this late afternoon sun, there was nothing new.
But there was nothing old, either.
I thought about whether I wanted my commentary on my poems to be before or after the poem, but it quickly became obvious that after is the right choice, so that you can experience the poem on its own first. This piece was written for my Cross-Genre and Experimental Writing course in undergrad (at the wonderful Hollins University), fall 2019. The prompt for the class assignments were obviously very open; we just had to point out what kind of experimentation it was. There’s actually more to this piece that I can’t include, a blackout poem of the Proverbs 31 Woman text in the Bible, the NLT translation (but Substack does not allow for blackout elements), but this part of the piece is experimenting by borrowing a format (the way Proverbs are presented in most English Bibles, with verses being two lines of text with the second indented slightly). Another experimental part of this was that it was the first time I allowed myself to be angry in my writing. I had allowed myself to be sad plenty of times, hopeful, questioning, but never angry. When I wrote verses 9 and 10, I asked myself, am I going too far? Is this language not Christlike? But I remind myself that, although I allowed the fullness of my bitterness towards this man (whose fake name is “Connor” in my memoir, though I sometimes call him Asshole Church Boy when I’m feeling really snappy) to come out in these lines, I do ultimately wish him well—because I think that although white evangelicalism gives white men a lot of power, it also hurts them too. They too are made to fit a mold. I watched him change into that mold and saw his own life and agency leave his eyes when I came out to him as he parroted all the classic lines like “I’m praying for you,” and “what you’re going through is the product of us living in a fallen world” and I hope that someday if he ever starts questioning what he believes or encounters a reality that is different from his worldview, he too will find peace in the not-knowing.
Aside from my feelings about this one man and our former friendship, I also allow myself to be angry with the way I was taught, angry about the translation in Proverbs 31 to be “wife of noble character” instead of “woman of valor” 1. I’m angry that there are still so many girls, women, trans people (trans women are women, I’m just making a distinction that trans folks regardless of gender identity are impacted by patriarchy too), and gender-expansive people who are still stuck inside this patriarchal movement and I so deeply desire that we all can get free.
I think the juxtaposition of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes is such a fascinating thing to consider. Two very different perspectives on life and wisdom, and they’re both in the Bible. I think of it as a kind of balance: you need to hold both in tension with one another. Yes, sometimes doing good things will make good things happen to you, but other times, life is random and unpredictable—like smoke. That’s what the word often translated as “meaningless,” hevel, means: smoke. As far as I know, the only English “translation” that keeps this smoke metaphor is The Message Bible, which is a paraphrase of course and not a translation (I have complicated feelings about The Message but I do like that he kept the smoke metaphor). So I’m also angry that our translations of the Bible so often fail us because it leaves out important context and nuance from the original language—no evangelical wants to read a whole book that repeats “life is meaningless/vanity” and so it’s not really taught much, so we lose out on that wisdom. Keeping the smoke metaphor might make it more accessible.
I’ll end each of these posts over my semester with a little life update: I’ve started classes and I now have so many new friends and I have a lot of homework but it’s okay, I’m excited for the journey. Yesterday we had Convocation at St. Mark’s Cathedral and Oh My God do I love liturgy. We committed to our studies and the mission of the school and the faculty and staff and returning students welcomed us into the learning community. I’m officially a seminarian, y’all!
What are your feelings/thoughts re: Proverbs 31? Feel free to unpack that baggage. Have you read Ecclesiastes, and does knowing the smoke metaphor change how you view the text? What other thoughts/feelings came up for you as you read this piece? I’d love to hear.
[1]A quote of Proverbs 31:10 from the New International Version. He probably had the whole passage memorized by heart.
Read Rachel Held Evans’ book A Year of Biblical Womanhood or her blog to find out about eshet chayil and how Proverbs 31 is a celebration of women, an empowering of women!