“I only chose to buy one pot,” proclaimed my wife, assessing her just-completed shopping trip. While attempting to furnish our new home, she returned disappointed with the prospects. Her discerning eye only allowed a single purchase. We are immigrants to the quasi-gothic city of Edinburgh. Like all immigrants everywhere we face a wall of opposition to simple tasks. So, we have both been churning through each day just to try to set up a new life in a new land. I have been admiring how Mary K. is going about it. What a prudent wife, I thought.
As noted previously, the Old Testament book of Proverbs is a wealthy trove of gender understanding. Proverbs 19:14 is a particular case in point:
House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the LORD.
A house has always been a valuable commodity. Especially in our times, we can recognize the great worth of property ownership. I was listening last week to my son-in-law expressing frustration at his home ownership prospects. It seemed to him that having a house was outside of his reach. So, this first word, “house,” holds forth a coveted prize. Wealth, the author’s second item, occupies an exalted place in Proverbs. Half the book’s proverbs about money warn about its dangers. The other half praise it as a reward for virtue, even a goal. Riches are cool to this author.
But what surpasses wealth and property in the book of Proverbs? Woman Wisdom and her charms (Proverbs 3:14, 3:15, 8:11, 8:19, 16:16, 20:15, 31:10). That to be desired above all, by a teen boy, the book’s audience, is a good woman. The possession which She personifies holds supreme value. In this personification that the book cleverly plays on, Proverbs offers the archetypal casting of the Second Member of the Trinity in the feminine (Matthew 11:19, Luke 7:35), reminding us of God’s image-making of man as male and female (Genesis 1:26-27), helping us to conceive of how gendered complementarity pictures the plurality in the Creator.
Which brings us back to the proverb. A gift that is above a house. A gift that is above wealth. The youth would include both as aspirations. Those prizes come out of a father’s substance. Yet there is something above these that is the very inheritance of YHWH. A unique bequeathing. This complement is not just a gift from the Divine. She is a gift of the Divine. Working well together with a prudent wife shows forth something of the Trinity.
If you are a husband and you find any prudence in your wife, tell her that today. Or if you are a wife and find in your husband securing strength, the complementary gift, let him hear about that today. Say to your spouse: “You are such an inheritance of God, you show me the divine.“ You could say this to make her day lighter, to encourage her heart. But also say it because it is true. Proverbs 19:14’s meditation yields a profound insight into what is going on when the work of our marriages works well.
It is hidden beneath the pots unpurchased.