eter tells husbands to live with
their wives with knowledge. But many modern men face a barrier
when they consider these words. They do not understand women because
they do not understand wisdom, and they do not understand wisdom
because they do not approach her as a woman.1
Throughout the book of Proverbs, wisdom appears to us as a woman.
The book begins with two women, personifications of wisdom and
folly respectively, and ends with a particular woman.
As a woman, wisdom appears under various aspects, and men who
would be wise must approach her with all these aspects in mind.
While some of the feminine aspects of wisdom are not directly
applicable to a man’s understanding of his wife, several
of them are.
First, she is an instructor, a teacher, a schoolmarm ready to
rap our knuckles (Prov. 1:20-25), hauling us out of the classroom
by the ear. Wisdom is a woman who effectively teaches little-boy-simpletons.
This means that a man who pursues wisdom should seek, among other
things, to sit still in his desk and try to keep ink off his face.
Wisdom is pursued with humility.
Wisdom is also a wealthy patroness, one who throws spectacular
banquets to which we are wonderfully invited. “Wisdom hath
builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars: She hath
killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished
her table” (Prov. 9:1-12). A man who pursues wisdom should
behave as a man behaves who is invited to dine at a palace or
mansion. He should respond to the invitation, watch his manners,
and eat what is served, all the while rejoicing in the wisdom
that comes with bread and wine. Wisdom is pursued with gladness
and joy; wisdom is gained with a knife and fork.
While all this is important, the remaining aspects of feminine
wisdom are more directly relevant to the man who wants to pursue
wisdom as a means of learning how to dwell together with his wife.
Wisdom is a sexually attractive woman (Prov. 7:4) and should
be sought as any sensible suitor would court a beautiful and intelligent
woman. The name sister in this context should be taken the same
way it is taken in the Song of Songs (5:1). The man who passionately
courts wisdom here is protected in the next verse from the “strange
woman,” who flatters with her words. When wisdom is courted,
seduction loses its allure. When the feminine personification
of wisdom is courted, a man is protected from very tangible, non-personified
hookers and tramps. When men come to see wisdom as altogether
lovely and they seek to win her hand, they are sexually protected.
A wise man marries this woman, and is instructed to be faithful
to her. She is a dear wife, never to be forsaken. “Get wisdom,
get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words
of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love
her, and she shall keep thee” (Prov. 4:5-6). This is the
language of marriage. A man who ditches the wife of his youth
is thereby revealing that he abandoned another woman some time
before. Before he leaves his wife for some young twinkie, he has
to have already left wisdom for folly.
She is our mother, and speaks to us as to her children. “Now
therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they
that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it
not” (Prov. 8:32-33). In this image, wisdom is our mother,
but viewing wisdom as a mother enables a man to see his wife as
a mother as well, and this teaches him to respect her high calling.
This approach to wisdom, treating her as a woman, collides sharply
with the approach of modernity, which sees wisdom as a simple
matter of factual excavation. We dig up rocks that must be sorted
out, counted, and organized into larger and smaller piles according
to size, color and weight. The world is thought to be a place
of brute facts, all needing to be fashioned into a more efficient
mining operation. The ancient word says that wisdom is woman to
be approached with a rose, a sonnet, or both; we think it is a
mountain to be razed with strip-mining equipment. When it comes
to obeying Peter’s injunction to live with our wives with
knowledge, men of all ages have unfortunately been dense. But
modern men have this additional handicap: we have a false understanding
of wisdom that distorts how we understand most of the world around
us. And because of this, it is little wonder that we don’t
understand our wives.