I was on a long walk with a Jewish friend the other day, and I asked her about what Christians know as Proverbs 31. She didn't recognize it by that title, but when I quoted a few lines, she said, "Oh, the Woman of Valor passage!" She was shocked and appalled to learn that many Christian women view it as a checklist of desiderata at which they will surely fail. She called it a poem and was very eager to explain to me that in Jewish tradition it is memorized by men, not by women, and used for the purpose of blessing their wives, not challenging them. That led into a discussion of Reformed Jewish exegesis, which emphasizes historical context and looks for transferable principles, and an informal poll as we walked of whether it would be actually be useful to our husbands for us to rise before dawn and prepare food for them (conclusion: her husband doesn't get up early, and even Jesus barely wants to talk to me before about 8 AM).
Around month four of trying to literally obey everything in the Bible (and some things that aren't) pertaining to women ( and sometimes to everyone) Rachel Held Evans had the same conversation with her Orthodox Jewish informant. She heard everything I did, and also learned that the poem's vocabulary lent triumphal overtones to the everyday tasks of cooking, providing, shepherding, planning, and maybe even working out, summarizing all these seemingly mundane activities with the phrase "eshet chayil," "woman of valor." This phrase may be sung by the husband to his wife at Sabbath dinner, or used by women to encourage each other upon any accomplishment. Cleaned your bathroom? Woman of valor! Earned a paycheck? Woman of valor! Stayed up all night with a colicky baby? Woman of valor!
Nevertheless, Rachel decided to dedicate one month to working her way through the poem the evangelical-Christian way, like a checklist. She tried to learn to sew. She got up at some imaginary hour of the morning. She cooked three meals a day. She worked out. She went to the city limit marker on a major highway and held up a sign that said "Dan [her husband] is awesome." Because when you are writing a stunt memoir, that is how you roll. And I do love me a stunt memoir.
The idea was to 'take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year,' but I think she ran out of instructions, because she devoted whole months to Biblical practices that apply to everyone, such as the observance of Yom Kippur and the pursuit of just behavior. Now I'm curious about whether a man would run into the same problem, if he limited himself to commands just pertaining to men. His arms might get tired, depending on how long his prayer times were...
Evans also practiced mindfulness in everyday tasks, cut Martha a break, redefined modesty, waded into the Mommy Wars, called her longsuffering husband "Master" for a whole year, tried to submit to her husband in all things (until he ordered her to knock it off), and learned about Greco-Roman household codes. I don't imagine anyone would agree with every single conclusion she reached, but she sure was an entertaining and thought-provoking traveling companion.
I have spent my whole Christian life trying to figure out what my faith tells me about being a woman, yet I certainly heard some new ideas from this book. If it is crucial to your theology to believe that roles, tasks, duties and privileges vary greatly depending on your gender, you should skip this one, but if you are starting to think that out of the 31,102 verses in the Bible, a very small percent are specific to only one gender, this book may be of interest to you.
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