Proverbs 31

Chapter 31 of the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible is presented as advice which Lemuel's mother gave to him, about how a virtuous king should reign, and also detailing the attributes of a virtuous wife or ideal woman. The second section of text of this chapter directs women to be industrious and fear the Lord.

The 10th to 31st verses of the chapter are called Eshet Ḥayil (אשת חיל, woman of valor). It is a praise of the good wife, a definition of a perfect wife or "ideal woman" in Judaism. This "Woman of Worth" has been described as the personification of wisdom, the ideal wife of an ancient patriarchal imagination, or in some sense as a description of a particular class of Women in Israel, Persia, Syria-Palestine or in Hellenistic society - or on all those levels. It is one of the thirteen alphabetical acrostic poems in the Bible. Traditionally, the Eisheth Ḥayil was viewed as written by King Solomon and many prominent theologians continue to hold this belief. However there is a more recent branch of critical scholarship which suggests it was added to Proverbs later. This chapter is recited on Friday night, before Shabbat dinner in some Jewish homes. Some see this as a praise directed from the husband to his wife. It has also been suggested that the son in Proverbs 31 is King Solomon, receiving advice from Bathsheba, herself the wife of King David.

King James Version

The King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV) or King James Bible (KJB), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England that began in 1604 and was completed in 1611.

First printed by the King's Printer Robert Barker, this was the third translation into English to be approved by the English Church authorities. The first was the Great Bible commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII (1535), and the second was the Bishops' Bible of 1568. In January 1604, James I convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans, a faction within the Church of England. The translation is widely considered a towering achievement in English literature, as both beautiful and scholarly.

James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy. The translation was done by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic text, while the Apocrypha was translated from the Greek and Latin. In the Book of Common Prayer (1662), the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible – for Epistle and Gospel readings (but not for the Psalter which has retained substantially Coverdale's Great Bible version) and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament.

King James

King James may refer to:

Monarchs

Scottish

English and Scottish

Spanish