Proverbs 31:13
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
She seeks wool, and flax, and works willingly with her hands.
American King James Version (AKJV)
She seeks wool, and flax, and works willingly with her hands.
American Standard Version (ASV)
She seeketh wool and flax, And worketh willingly with her hands.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
She gets wool and linen, working at the business of her hands.
Webster's Revision
She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
World English Bible
She seeks wool and flax, and works eagerly with her hands.
English Revised Version (ERV)
She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
Clarke's Proverbs 31:13 Bible Commentary
She seeketh wood and flax, and worketh willingly, etc. -
II. This is the second part of her character, giving the particulars of which it is composed.
1. She did not buy ready woven cloth: she procured the raw material, if wool, most probably from her own flocks; if flax, most probably from her own fields.
2. Here she manufactured; for she worketh willingly with her hands. And all her labor is a cheerful service; her will, her heart, is in it.
It needs no arguments to prove that women, even of the highest ranks, among the Greeks, Romans, and Israelites, worked with their hands at every kind of occupation necessary for the support of the family. This kind of employment was not peculiar to the virtuous woman in the text.
Barnes's Proverbs 31:13 Bible Commentary
Worketh willingly with her hands - Or, worketh with willing hands. The stress laid upon the industrial habits of Israelite matrons may perhaps belong to a time when, as under the monarchy of Judah, those habits were passing away.
Wesley's Proverbs 31:13 Bible Commentary
31:13 Flax - That she may find employment for her servants.Worketh - She encourages them to work by her example; which was a common practice among princesses in those first ages. Not that it is the duty of kings and queens to use manual operations, but it is the duty of all persons, the greatest not excepted, to improve all their talents, and particularly their time, which is one of the noblest of them, to the service of that God to whom they must give an account, and to the good of that community to which they are related.