12/29/2023
Good advice for young men seeking a wife!
"This is the clearest indicator that a woman is a bad candidate for a wife: she is loud.
“She is loud and stubborn;
her feet do not stay at home.”
Pr 7:11
This is a woman you must avoid. She will destroy you.
A loud woman is not necessarily one who speaks with too much volume. The Hebrew word can also be translated as boisterous or tumultuous. It speaks of turbulence or commotion & is meant to bring to mind the roaring wind of a storm. Therein we find a good metaphor for a loud woman.
Like a storm, she is full of unruly energy
She yields only to her own purposes.
This definition of a loud woman comes further into focus when we consider how “loud & stubborn” is paralleled against “her feet do not stay at home.”
This woman has a husband. She is supposed to be submitted to his mission. It’s his home she should be caught up in the work of building. However, she is off doing her own thing. She refuses to be “chained down” to the home of one man.
Matthew Henry put it well:
“By her place, not her own house; she hates the confinement and employment of that; her feet abide not there any longer than needs must. She is all for gadding abroad, changing place and company. Now is she without in the country, under pretense of taking the air, now in the streets of the city, under pretense of seeing how the market goes. She is here, and there, and every where but where she should be. She lies in wait at every corner, to pick up such as she can make a prey of. Virtue is a penance to those to whom home is a prison.”
The loud woman hates the home because the home represents submission to a will besides her own.
Therefore, she prowls for a fool who will help her achieve her ends. Commenting on Pr 7:10—the verse just prior—in their excellent Old Testament commentary, Keil & Delitzsch explain the motives of this brazen woman:
“…she is of a hidden mind, of a concealed nature; for she feigns fidelity to her husband & flatters her paramours as her only beloved, while in truth she loves none, and each of them is to her only a means to an end, viz., to the indulgence of her worldly sensual desire.”
The loud woman swings from man to man like a monkey swings from branch to branch. Men exist to serve her mission. They are useful in so much they allow her to fulfill her desires.
Sheryl Sandberg is a great example of a loud woman. In Lean In, she writes:
“When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.”
What makes a good husband according to Sandberg? It’s a man who doesn’t get in the way of his wife’s ambitions. This is why the commanding “alpha males” of her youth won’t do. They’ll buck against her demands and manipulations.
Sandberg, like all loud women, eventually settles on a compliant “beta” who knows who’s in charge.
This, of course, is an inversion of the biblical pattern. Manhood is ultimately about a man building God’s house by building his own. This work can’t be fulfilled alone. It requires a woman. Hence, God brought Eve to Adam as a helper. She is a necessary complement to the mission—but she isn’t the mission.
The loud woman will not submit herself to such a situation. In time, she will look for a way out, and in doing so tear down her house with her own hands (Pr 14:1). This is why the Queen warned her son to not give his strength to promiscuous women. These women destroy kings (Pr 31:3). He is to instead look for a woman who will multiply the work of his hands (Pr 31:10–31). This woman possesses a beauty that never fades (v. 30)."
~Michael Foster
