“Do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings.”

If you have read the news or watched television any time in the last forty years then I don’t need to say much about this one.  There are women who are attracted to powerful men. There are powerful men who are distracted and seduced by certain kinds of women and they always seem to find each other. How many leaders have been brought down by lingering when they should have left? How many have wasted themselves and their missions because they spent their strength on those who only bring ruin.

And along with that temptation comes the attraction of living an undisciplined life in other ways.  It probably doesn’t matter to the devil what particular sin will cause us to drift. His only interest is in finding some unprotected niche in our lives that makes us vulnerable.  “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” C.S. Lewis

And it is true not only for kings but for us as well.  Once a pattern begins to effect one part of our lives it leaks into others. Slowly, we find ourselves wasting our talent and so much of the promise of our lives simply withers. We forget. What an awful word to describe a life of promise.  Forgetting. We forget ourselves and then others who have counted on us.  We forget our calling. We forget our commitments and promises. We forget the people who counted on us and then eventually we turn away from them leaving them unprotected and vulnerable.

“Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.”

In other words, have no care for them. Numb them but don’t help change their circumstances. Entertain them. Pacify them. Ignore them.

A leader who forgets himself can only encourage others to do the same. Like so many, I love “The Lion King” and what Mufasa says to Simba in a vision. “You have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me.”

It’s an awful end and that is why Lemuel’s mother wanted so much to impress on him how important it was not only to himself but to others to discipline his life and surround himself with people of character. It is a picture of a king who wastes his life, his opportunities and his responsibilities.

Of course, that could have been the end but it’s not. The writer turns to what you could call the high point of the entire book – the wife of noble character.

Character. What is it and how does the writer illustrate it?

If you listen to enough political chatter you will hear that character doesn’t really matter.  Instead, it is whether or not a political candidate or office holder can get certain things accomplished. Who they are in private is of no concern. If you read business news you would think character doesn’t matter as much as meeting the quarterly expectations of the investors. His or her personal life is completely separate. If you read the accounts of religious leaders who have run their ship up on the rocks you can see how their organizations shielded them from charges of sexual harassment, misuse of funds, and abuse of staff. We chalk it up to difficult personalities as long as they can deliver results however we want to define that.

Does character still matter?  I was reading an article on the character of past Presidents and was stopped by this and had to read it more than once: “This is why, in spite of our knowledge that the president is a mortal like the rest of us, we make believe he is something more, a guardian of the republic’s mysteries, a symbol of continuity, the keeper of what Lincoln called its “republican robe.”  The double thinking by which we separate the infirmities of the individual from the majesty of the office allows us to preserve the presidency in it’s cultic purity, yet the whole business requires a certain suspension of belief.  The virtue we seek or pretend to find in the first magistrate is at odds with the nature of the system under which he claws his way to power.”

But it is noble character that sets this woman apart from others.  “Many women do noble things,” he writes but that is perhaps not the same as noble character.  Character is deeper.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.     Abraham Lincoln

Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.     John C. Geikie

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.    Theodore Roosevelt

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.      Aristotle

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted    Alfred Adler

Character is simply habit long continued.     Plutarch

And that, of course, is what defines the life of a woman worth more than rubies. It is a life of not only noble deeds but the mundane, repetitive, ordinary and habitual. It is a life of building trusted relationships, creativity, and spending a life blessing others.

One more thing before we close the book of Proverbs.

Do you ever recall reading a book where the author turns over the last chapter to another writer? I don’t. Maybe Solomon said everything he wanted to say and this was an opportunity to give one of his protege’s, King Lemuel, some exposure.  Maybe it was meant to be the start of a separate book and got attached to the Proverbs file by mistake. Maybe King Lemuel’s mother was one of Solomon’s many wives and she wanted to add her counsel to his.  To this point everything had been counsel from a father’s perspective. The balance of the book is wisdom from a mother to her son. For whatever reason, it seems like a sudden and inexplicable break in the narrative of the book. There must have been a reason in including it if only as an epilogue.

That said, while it would be easy to see it as an afterthought, it is a better conclusion for me than the closing words of Chapter 30. “If you have played the fool and exalted yourself, or if you have planned evil, clap your hand over your mouth! For as churning milk produces butter, and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife.”

No, there is something unfinished about that and the last section of the last chapter ties the whole book together for me.

Why? Because it ends as it began. It begins with “Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out in the gateways of the city she makes her speech.”

It concludes with, “Many women do noble things but you surpass them all. Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

Can you see the connection? The book opens with the description of Wisdom as a woman calling out in the city gates and ends with her being praised at the city gates as a woman of noble character.  Wisdom has become incarnated as the woman of noble character who, with her husband, is praised by the leaders of the community.

Yes, throughout the book we can see the influences of women who are not wise – in fact they are dangerous.  The wayward wife and adulteress whose lips drip with honey and whose speech is smoother than oil but her feet go down to death and her steps lead straight to the grave. The disgraceful wife is like a decay in her husband’s bones. The foolish woman tears down her own house and it is better to live on a corner of the roof than to share a house with a quarrelsome wife.

But throughout the book we are given glimpses of women who are wise, noble, encouraging, courageous, and examples for men and women alike. If Solomon is indeed the author then his experience with women must have been encyclopedic and at the end the message is always “Choose carefully how you relate to the women in your life for they can lead you to honor and wisdom or to shame and death.

In a way, the whole book is about preparing a man as both a ruler of a kingdom but also a man who is worthy of such a wife. If a man will follow the advice of Solomon he will one day deserve the woman of noble character we read about in Chapter 31.  It is a perfect ending for both.