How many times have you done something that someone else was told to do? Did a manager at work tell someone to do something and you did it since they didn’t do it? In school, did you get stuck with extra typing because a project-mate was too busy to do their share? people often use the excuse that they don’t know how to do something, forcing that task on someone else. A Proverbs 31 woman is competent enough to do anything she may need to do.
In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers
Proverbs 31:19 NIV
A Proverbs 31 Woman Is Competent At Tasks
Do you know what it takes to make fabric? In ancient times, it was a huge project that took months at a time to make one role of fabric. That’s not even talking about turning those pieces of fabric into clothes. Those tasks were usually the woman’s job in the household. Proverbs 31 says that a wife picked out the flax and wool (verse 13), has strong arms (my guess is that verse 17 refers to the process of cleaning the raw materials before they can be spun), and holds the distaff and spindle (verse 19). Verse 24 skips to her making linen garments to sell and selling sashes. That skips the process of weaving the material herself, but was probably implied.
I looked up how to make fabric, and it is a very long process. This video is a quick overview of how people in late 1700s America made linen fabric. This video is a longer view of a man in Scotland actually doing the process, from sowing in April to harvesting three months later, to soaking it (rhetting) for 2 weeks, then drying it for ten days, then bundled to dry standing up for five days, then the labor intensive process of turning the plant stems into fibers to be spun. First handfuls of the dry plants are smacked to be less rigid. Then the plants are hit and bent to become even softer, removing the unwanted parts. Next the plant fibers go through brushes to remove the thick parts of the plant that can’t be used for weaving, but have other uses. A handful of the dry plant reduced down a lot. making fine linen would’ve meant going through smaller brushes again.
The Scotland video ended with the pure linen being sent to the local mill. Women in ancient times would’ve woven it themselves. This YouTube video briefly talks about how wool went from sheep to thread, but focuses on how Anglo-Saxon women wove the fabric to make clothes.
After the raw material is cleaned and softened, then the distaff and spindle were used to turn the mass of natural material into thread. That is where this verse comes in. The Proverbs 31 woman is competent enough to sit for hours spinning raw flax into thread she’ll eventually use to make fabric. It’s a long boring process, probably done without a spinning wheel, since they were invented over a thousand years after Proverbs was written. She could sit for hours on end moving her arms to make thread. Talk about repetitive and mind numbing work.
She Doesn’t Need To Do Everything
We shouldn’t forget that this is a queen talking to her son, though. In verse 15, she refers to servant girls, so it is very likely that the ideal godly wife was never meant to make her family’s family alone. Her daughters and servant girls would’ve helped with each of the tasks of making enough fabric to cloth the family and enough to sell. However, the best way to manage other people is to know how to do their job so we can correct them. It’s why many wealthy parents want their heirs to work their way up the company instead of starting at the top. The Proverbs 31 woman is competent enough to do each job in her household, but she probably isn’t the most skilled at every job. There is probably someone in the household more skilled, or quicker, than she is at the basic jobs.
It is interesting to think about these ancient household jobs though. Modern fabric is usually made completely by machine quicker than the ancients made anything. Handmade fabric is now an expensive novelty, not the common thing it once was.
Although I said that the wife was probably not doing every step of the process, there are images in Ancient Greece showing queens weaving. Not all the work was left to servants.