Passage: Proverbs 31 (ESV Bible Online).
Everyone seems to divide this into two sections: The words of King Lemuel that he was taught by his mother (vv 1-9), and then the description of a godly woman which has been taken as written for women.
Well, women can learn from it, and should, but it doesn’t read that way to me. Rather, the whole thing reads like the words of King Lumel that his mother taught him.
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
That’s what a mother says in Hebrew for, “Stop staring at her…”
Mark, good point that this passage is written to men. However . . . I am not so sure that Lemuel is even single. The woman of Prov.31 is NOT about a single gal, in any case, but about a matron. There are quite a few things that couldn’t ever be expected of an unmarried girl, in any time or place. So I think it is less mother telling a son what kind of girl he should want to marry, and more likely a mother telling her son how he should lead and encourage his wife, having already married her.
The rhetorical question “who can find an excellent wife” I think should not be taken to mean “what guy can find a gal who may someday BE an excellent wife,” but rather “who can find a (already married) woman who IS an excellent wife?”