Proverbs 10-13

The Facts (Chapter number: Verse)

10:1 - "A wise child makes a glad father, but a foolish child is a mother's grief."

11:16 - "A gracious woman gets honor, but she who hates virtue is covered with shame."
11:22 - "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without good sense."

12:4 - "A good wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones."

Proverbs 13 - No mention of any women.

My Comments


I'll just let Polonius give you the general gist of how these chapters are going.

First the original Shakespeare.

And then the Reduced Shakespeare version, just because it always makes me laugh.

But anyway, I guess I can say a few things about the verses we have here, even though it's not much.

It's good there's such a cut dry way for women to be. They are either honorable or shameful, a crown or rotten bones. Or, if they are beautiful, a bad woman gets to be a gold ring in a pig's nose. Guess there's never any grey area there. I wonder how harsh the cut off is for honorable. I can't imagine it's very lenient.

Am I the only one who thinks Proverbs 10:1 is kinda odd. A happy child makes a happy father but a poor child makes a poor mother? Remind anyone of the way we treat mother's today. When a child is bad or unruly it is a problem with his upbringing and usually a problem with the mother's child rearing. A bad child has a bad mother. Now, in the same vein, a good child has a good mother since we typically do not think of the father as someone who has any input in raising a child. So it does go both ways, which is still not really great because the father (if there is one) is completely erased in the equation and seen as not having any bearing on the child's behavior. Though even "good" mothers are critiqued within an inch of their lives, so much so that even good mothers can be seen a "overbearing" and bad.

I just thought it was interesting that even here the father gets the credit for a good child and the mother gets the credit for a bad child.

Friday: Proverbs 14-18