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Proverbs 31:25–27, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 31:25–27
Strength, wisdom, and attentive household care
Strength and honor are her clothing, and she laughs at a coming day
Strength and honor are her clothing, and she will laugh at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Clothing of strength and honor is character made visible, matching the silk and purple with something a moth cannot eat. Laughing at the time to come is confidence without denial: she can meet later days because of how she has lived, not a promise that grief will never arrive, and not a taunt at anxious people. Bread of idleness is refusal of a parasitic life, not a slur on rest, Sabbath, illness, or unemployment.
Her mouth is wise, and her tongue's teaching is kindness
Opens her mouth with wisdom means she speaks; the poem will not have her silent. Law of kindness is instruction that has loyal love as its rule, not niceness that never names a truth, and not a demand that women soothe everyone. Looking well to household ways is attentive management of a real place, not a destiny assigned to every female and not a reason to trap a woman indoors.
Strength, future-laughter, wise speech, kind teaching, and attention are one portrait of agency. A woman who speaks wisdom is not out of order in this book.
How this should shape us
Honor a woman whose strength is her clothing and whose mouth carries wisdom with kindness. Attend to the people and work actually in your care. Do not call rest idleness, and do not use household-watching to keep a woman from speaking or from any other honest labor.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 31:25–27 in your own words. Identify its form and collection, trace one line from role through contextual meaning and enduring truth to application, name one uncertainty, and reject one misuse explicitly.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful readers disagree?
Best judgment: The unit's speaker, literary form, imagery, or arrangement carries named uncertainty. The judgment follows the received sequence without inventing a biography or forcing every image into one allegory.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Proverbs 31:25–27, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 31:25-31:27
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1181-1182, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 31:25–27
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 31:25–27 and the Alphabetic praise of a woman of strength outline
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 31:25–27
Supports: One relationship-oriented reading of the complete poem, bounded against universal checklist or household-mandate use.
Branch, ‘Proverbs 31:10-31,’ Koers 77.2 (2012), pp. 1-9, sections on acrostic structure, Woman Wisdom comparison, work, commerce, generosity, speech, fear, and praise relevant to Proverbs 31:25–27
Supports: Feminist and literary review of Wisdom, Folly, Strange Woman, mothers, wives, women in sentence sayings, and the closing woman of strength.
Hartwell, Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between (Birmingham PhD, 2017), pp. 13-25, 132-171, 172-204, 205-244, and 245-260 as relevant to the gendered figures and sayings in Proverbs 31:25–27
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Exact location: Proverbs 31:25–27, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Proverbs
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 31:25-31:27
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Proverbs with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
Exact location: NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1181-1182, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 31:25–27
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Proverbs
K. T. Aitken
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Exact location: Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 31:25–27 and the Alphabetic praise of a woman of strength outline
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
The situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth in the Book of Proverbs
G. H. Wittenberg
Scriptura 21, 1987; open archive 2020
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Exact location: Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 31:25–27
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
Proverbs 31:10-31: A passage containing wisdom principles for a successful marriage
Robin Gallaher Branch
Koers 77.2, article a49, 2012
Supports: One relationship-oriented reading of the complete poem, bounded against universal checklist or household-mandate use.
Exact location: Branch, ‘Proverbs 31:10-31,’ Koers 77.2 (2012), pp. 1-9, sections on acrostic structure, Woman Wisdom comparison, work, commerce, generosity, speech, fear, and praise relevant to Proverbs 31:25–27
Open source ↗open access doctoral thesis
Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between: in search of a real woman in the Book of Proverbs
Jeanette May Hartwell
University of Birmingham, 2017
Supports: Feminist and literary review of Wisdom, Folly, Strange Woman, mothers, wives, women in sentence sayings, and the closing woman of strength.
Exact location: Hartwell, Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between (Birmingham PhD, 2017), pp. 13-25, 132-171, 172-204, 205-244, and 245-260 as relevant to the gendered figures and sayings in Proverbs 31:25–27
Open source ↗