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We Who Thirst
Delve into the captivating tales of women from the Bible, exploring their lives within ancient cultures and historical contexts. These narratives reveal not only their stories but also the profound love and beauty of the God we worship.
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For a complete bibliography for each episode visit: https://rb.gy/xx0no6
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We Who Thirst
005 Proverbs 31: Introduction & Stereotypical Womanhood
Have you ever wondered why Proverbs 31 often feels more like an impossible checklist than a celebration of womanhood? Join us as we explore this transformative passage with my friend Elice Kilko, who brings a unique perspective from her Jewish heritage and experiences with evangelical purity culture. Together, we unravel the pressures women face within evangelical circles, particularly the expectation to conform to idealized roles like stay-at-home moms and perfect wives. By diving into the historical context and original Hebrew text of Proverbs 31, we challenge conventional interpretations and aim to free women from unrealistic standards.
In this eye-opening episode, we reframe Proverbs 31 as aspirational literature, not a rigid set of rules, and discuss how this shift can liberate women from feelings of inadequacy. Elice shares her journey of moving from empowerment to burden under conflicting cultural expectations, and we explore how wisdom literature serves as guidance rather than prescriptive mandates. Our goal is to offer a more loving and freeing perspective on what it means to be a woman in God's eyes, celebrating diverse expressions of womanhood and emphasizing that God's delight goes beyond mere productivity. Tune in for a conversation that promises to change how you view Proverbs 31 forever.
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Today we are starting a mini-series on Proverbs 31 to discover how God delights in women as whole people. If you are like me, many of you have probably avoided Proverbs 31 for much of your adult life. So right at the start, before we get into the text at all, I want to acknowledge the difficulties and the triggers this passage can bring up for many women rigors this passage can bring up for many women. My goal with this series on Proverbs 31 is to reframe the entire idea of ideal womanhood by considering Proverbs 31 not as a checklist, but in its historical context. What is God communicating to the original audience, and thereby us, about how he views women and what he loves and delights in in women? This is going to be a delight emphasis from Proverbs 31, rather than a to-do checklist emphasis.
Jessica Jenkins:I am really praying that God will reveal to all of the listeners the depths of his love for you and how he values women. I'm praying that God will heal and lift away burdens you carry because of this passage so that you can walk forward in freedom.
Jessica Jenkins:With me today is my dear friend, Elice Kilko. Elice is a missionary and missionary kid who has lived internationally in both Israel and Brazil. She has a degree in Bible and she has a heart for women to know how much they are loved by God. So tell me, Elice, what has your experience with Proverbs 31 been?
Elice Kilko:Well, Jessica, hello to everybody. My experience has been very varied depending on what context I'm in. Within the evangelical church, it's felt very much like a checklist.
Elice Kilko:In contexts where I was in a context with Judaism and kind of that my family's heritage it has felt sometimes like a blessing and very empowering. Think like Fiddler on the Roof, the prayer, the Sabbath prayer that they do for women. That has always felt very beautiful to me. So I've had both extremes in my past and I think the most confusing thing for me has been trying to meld them and figure out how they fit together, because two things can be true at once. But how does that all fit together? I think is really how it's been my experience.
Jessica Jenkins:Absolutely, and I love that you have the Jewish background of how they use the Proverbs 31 as a blessing a blessing for women rather than a checklist for women.
Elice Kilko:.
Elice Kilko:yes, and the checklist part feels so icky, like it's something I could never live up to, something that you know as a newly married wife. Years ago, how could I get everything done? And then in motherhood, you know if I'm dealing with postpartum depression. You know how do I stay on top of things and trying to feel like this list that I just will never measure up to.
Elice Kilko:Absolutely so that part has been very like a weight on my shoulders.
Jessica Jenkins:Yeah, because, especially when it's taught as a checklist, you walk away feeling like, okay, now I have my marching orders, but what if I can't live up to this? As you mentioned, postpartum depression or for people who are neurodivergent and they have multiple ways of maybe executive dysfunction, or they just don't have any spoons left, or chronic illness, chronic pain all of these things take away from our ability to produce. But when Proverbs 31 is held up for us, she is highly productive, and when that is held up as the ideal, anyone who, for whatever reason, cannot produce in this season can often feel like a failure.
Elice Kilko:Yes, and I think that feeling like a failure when you're reading God's word is the worst place to be. You want to try to do. You want to serve the Lord out of love, not out of a sense of duty, I think.
Jessica Jenkins:Yeah, and when you feel like you have to produce, it becomes much more duty than love at times, especially when you're exhausted and you're just trying to white knuckle your way through the day as a young mom or somebody who just doesn't have the support they need.
Elice Kilko:What was it like for you in your circles?
Jessica Jenkins:I don't remember us focusing on Proverbs 31 Peace's a The whole Excellent whole Wife lot specifically. It was kind of just referenced vaguely in other books.
Jessica Jenkins:I remember being immersed in, like Martha pieces the excellent wife, oh, yes, so it was the whole the whole evangelical womanhood ideal of what a woman is and it was just kind of mashed in there. But I never really fit with a lot of those evangelical womanhood ideals and so I just kind of avoided some of the whole shtick, like I did not want to even look at it. And last summer I was like, okay, I need to sit down from the Hebrew and work through Proverbs 31. Hebrew translate it poetic analysis, historical context. We're going to do this deeply, and when I did it completely changed my perspective on everything. But I was absolutely terrified to do that.
Elice Kilko:I remember when you went through that, what were some of the things that you found. Is there something you want to share about the? What you learned in the Hebrew?
Jessica Jenkins:I just we'll get into all the pieces of that as we go through this whole series, because there's so much. But the one thing that stuck with me the most is, rather than Proverbs 31 being a vehicle of shame, that I didn't measure up to an ideal. God really showed me how he delights in women. They're not second-class citizens, they're not only good as long as they get to a standard which I've seen in a lot of Christian books. I was reading Even Exile over the summer and reviewing it on Instagram and a lot of that was like your identity as a person doesn't matter, it's whether you match up to this ideal that is important, and then God has value for you and then you matter if you match up to this ideal. But when I did the deep dive into Proverbs 31, it became very apparent that God values women and a varied expression of womanhood.
Jessica Jenkins:Not just I was raised and you may have had a similar upbringing, but there was kind of just like this muted, singular expression of womanhood. That was the cultural's goal. They wanted it to look kind of like a certain box. I never fit in that box, but they managed to take all of the passages to point towards that box. And when I deep dived Proverbs 31,. I was like, oh, this is actually not talking about that ideal box at all. This actually flies in the face of half of what they're saying and is like nope. And so I found Proverbs 31,. It went from being a shame-inducing passage to this hugely empowering passage. That's like God likes women and he likes a broad variety of women, and I cannot wait for other people to realize how much God delights in the variety of gifts and personalities he's put in women and to walk in freedom in that.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, I'm so excited to talk about that and hear what you've learned, and I'm just super excited because I think that taking away the shame that we've felt from Proverbs 31 and really seeing what God has to say about it is just going to be so helpful.
Jessica Jenkins:So what was the ideal womanhood for you growing up? where
Elice Kilko:briefly, I think within the evangelical circle it was definitely somebody probably a stay-at-home mom, probably homeschools or sends her kids to Christian school, very much a homemaker, very much involved at church, and none of those things are bad. But that's such a place of privilege. If you are in a socioeconomic background where you have to work as a woman, you're ostracized and seen as less than. And in my context my family was working. We had a small church plant and like 90% of the women had to work outside the home and if we were, you know, placing these shackles on them, they could have felt a lot less than if they felt like they needed to be at home. So really seeing how how we read the Bible um really impacts women, I think, is really important, because I think that in so many cases it was seen as, just like you said, this one homogenous. If you didn't fit in this one box, then you were doing it wrong. And I think that there's so many different, varied myths in what Proverbs 31 says.
Jessica Jenkins:Yeah, absolutely. For me it was very much the similar. People would never say directly you absolutely have to be a stay at home mom. But the vibe I feel like there's so many vibes that we picked up Some books would say it directly, like you have to do, but most of them would hedge it. They would really emphasize you need to be a stay at home mom, but if you can't but they would they would give you that out for financial reasons. But they would really emphasize you need to be a stay at home mom. But if you can't but they would they would give you that out for financial reasons, but they would still kind of heap shame on you if you actually were in that boat.
Jessica Jenkins:It wasn't a freedom to do what is best for your family. Whatever that looks like, it's a. This is really what it should look like. We'll allow it if you have to do that, but it's not the best, yeah. And so you just feel that really deeply in your soul, trying to figure out what it means as a teenager moving into adult. What does it mean to be a woman?
Elice Kilko:Yeah, for sure.
Jessica Jenkins:For me, the internal result of a lot of these ideals was a lot of shame and feeling trapped and feeling very performative Performative Christianity, but also performative wife and mothering. It wasn't natural. It wasn't a true expression of who I was. I was performing my role as wife and I was performing my role as mom, trying to match up to specific evangelical ideals that didn't fit who I am as a person, because I didn't feel free to be who God actually made me. I felt like I had to conform to some other box ideal. Did you experience anything like that?
Elice Kilko:other box, ideal. Did you experience anything like that? I did. I often felt like in certain situations I was putting on a mask of what a good mom or a good wife looks like. A good wife does such, and so A good mom corrects her children like this in front of people, even though at home it might be different. And noticing the fact that I would put on that mask was very shame inducing, because I didn't have the freedom to be who God wanted me to be, not just before him, but before others as well.
Jessica Jenkins:Yeah, yeah, that's really profound, and so I'm hoping that going into Proverbs 31 will really help us with a lot of these things and will free us to be who God made us to be. Obviously, we all have rough edges that God is sanctifying and helping us grow, but the core of who we are our personality or this, that and the other God can delight in that, as it is sanctified into his image. We don't all have to look like a homogenous group of females.
Elice Kilko:And thank God for that. It would be a boring, boring world, so boring.
Jessica Jenkins:So let's talk about Proverbs 31 a little bit. Proverbs 31 occurs, obviously in the book of Proverbs, which is wisdom literature. Elise describe for me what wisdom literature was, especially how it was used in the Jewish communities. You were around growing up.
Elice Kilko:Wisdom. Literature is seen as a teaching tool, and so a lot of the Proverbs would have been taught as a in general in life. This is how things work. So realizing that there are exceptions, but that in an ideal world here are things how, here are how things work the best. If you know you reap what you reap, you will sow that kind of idea, and so very much qualifying. If you do this, then this will happen. If you are wise, things will go well. If you are foolish, things will go badly. So it's a teaching tool primarily.
Jessica Jenkins:Awesome, yeah, proverbs is. It focuses on how practical, what life works best. Sometimes people get confused and they think things are promises. And the book of Proverbs is not promises like train up a child in the way they will go and when they were old they will not depart from it. It's not a promise that if you're a good parent your kids will turn out well. It's a general principle that overall in life, invested parents who train their kids well have kids that turn out better than non-invested parents who don't train their kids. It's general principles. Practical life advice is what wisdom literature and the book of Proverbs is.
Jessica Jenkins:The Proverbs in the Bible is a collection of wise sayings handed down from the older generations to the younger, and I think it's important to frame Proverbs 31 in that context. There are sayings that are general truths that typically will work well, but they again, they are not promises that A always comes from B, just generally. This happens Throughout the entire book of Proverbs. Various points in the text point to what an ideal man would look like, and much of Proverbs is written from a father to his son, and so it points to as a son. It's aspirational literature. What would an ideal man, what could that look like, but it also has vignettes of the foolish or slothful man. It has vignettes of a wise woman or a foolish woman. So when we arrive at Proverbs 31, which is the final chapter of the book of Proverbs, this passage paints a picture of what the ideal woman, who typifies lady wisdom, could look like in that culture. It's aspirational literature and it's never meant to be a checklist, and there's some key reasons for that that I really want to focus on.
Elice Kilko:So why is it not a checklist? What are the key reasons?
Jessica Jenkins:Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is not meant to be a checklist. Sometimes in the New Testament we'll see lists of commands, but the book of Proverbs doesn't do that. Another reason it's not a checklist is that the Proverbs 31 woman is a wealthy, aristocratic, noble woman or queen. The things she does a lot of them, and we'll get into all these details in later episodes but a lot of the things she does are not things that the average everyday peasant woman would be able to do. It's kind of like handing you or I a checklist of something that the first lady is responsible for and being like this is what you need to do day to day as a stay-at-home mom. It's like that doesn't even jive, like that doesn't work.
Elice Kilko:So we can recognize in the passage. As we study it, we'll see different areas where her privilege and socioeconomic background figure into the things that she's doing or not doing. Is that what you're saying Exactly?
Jessica Jenkins:Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Some people say Proverbs 31 is it's just a typification of lady wisdom. I like to interpret it a little bit more literally in that if we take it as maybe an expression of what an ideal wife would look like, it gives us more concrete things to take away. If we're just like, oh, it's just another typification of lady wisdom, it's like, okay, what do I do with that? But if we can look at it as these are idealized things for a woman of social stature, in that culture, we can see value structures. We can see the things that are valued by both God and the original audience, principles that we could follow Exactly, or aspire to.
Jessica Jenkins:Right, General things, but not like a checklist of like. One thing I always hear is she gets up early and she stays up late. When does she sleep? Yeah, that's one question people are always like when does she sleep? But they're also like you need to be diligent, you need to be getting up early and you need to like work and we're probably going to do an entire episode on those specific ideas and the concept of rest in the Proverbs 31 woman. So you will want to come back for that. But there's a lot of things that can be turned into checklists. Be sure you get up before your kids to do your devos, because the Proverbs 31 woman was up before the sun. That can turn into a checklist, but that's not what the Proverbs is doing.
Jessica Jenkins:Also, when we look at the beginning of Proverbs 31, because the chapter about the Proverbs, the section about the Proverbs 31 woman, doesn't start till verse 10. If we look at the beginning of the chapter, it starts in verse one, the words of King Lemuel, a pronouncement which his mother taught him. So Proverbs 31 is framed by the chapter it's in it starts it's a proverb written by a woman, not for her daughter, saying this is the checklist of things you need to do, but for her son saying this is the type of woman you would want to be queen. It's not written to a peasant boy. This is the type of wife you want on your farm. This is aspirational literature. A king what would he potentially want in a queen for that level? So we're already talking about a situation where she doesn't match the socioeconomic level of most of Israel at the time, and so it couldn't be a checklist for the average person, because specific things in the text point to a social status that only a couple people could attain to.
Elice Kilko:And that's such an important distinction to make and to understand before we even get into the chapter.
Jessica Jenkins:Yes, absolutely the Proverbs 31 chapter. It's an acrostic poem which would make it easier to remember, but that also means we don't have like a full structure. It's not a list, again a checklist, and it's thematic as we go through, but it's acrostic, it's just showing kind of like A to Z young princeling. These are the types of things to pay attention to as you choose a wife, because you need to choose carefully. So, A to Z, here are the types of things a woman should have.
Elice Kilko:And acrostic literature was used a lot in Hebrew. Poetry like Psalm 119 was also an acrostic, so it was an easy teaching tool that they often used for teaching different principles people learning to write kind of like you know old school style primers where you write specific poems to practice handwriting. A is for apple, B is for ball.
Jessica Jenkins:Exactly. They would use that a lot for those sorts of things. So as we look at the Proverbs 31 chapter, there's so much that can go into it. There's so much that we bring to the passage. And as we wrap up our episode today, I just want to remind us of a couple things.
Jessica Jenkins:Proverbs 31 is not a checklist. It is a set of characteristics of what a godly queen could look like. Now these characteristics have application, have implications for everybody, for all time, but only very few people would be doing exactly what she is described doing. So we can take general principles about what God delights in women from this passage without taking you must do. You must get up before the sun and keep your lamp burning after bedtime to keep working hard. We can move away from those sorts of. She does this. Therefore, I must do.
Jessica Jenkins:Likewise to this is a specific woman being described in a specific socioeconomic situation. There is character underneath and there are things God delights in. How do we marry those to then see how it impacts our lives today. If you would like to get your own copy of my translation of Proverbs 31, I have translated it all from the Hebrew to bring out various nuances and poetic elements in the text. If you would like that, go to my website, wewhothirstcom. You can find that there. Just join my mailing list and you will be able to get your own download of the Proverbs 31 passage. That brings out a lot of the nuances from the Hebrew text that we will be talking about in this podcast.
Elice Kilko:And you definitely want to do that because Jessica's translations are so, so good. I love them. So definitely do that. Check it out.
Jessica Jenkins:And thank you, elise, for joining us. I cannot wait to talk with you more about everything going on with Proverbs 31, as we will come back for our next episode that is going to talk about kind of her personality. Who is she deep down? What type of woman is she? Did Elise and I match up to that type of womanhood, or ideal womanhood? Let's find out. That's the next episode. Until then, may the Lord bless you and keep you.
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