Both women are hard to find and are more precious than jewels. Both have a house and a staff of young women. Both provide food, prosperity and security. Both are known at the city gates and bestow honor on their companions. Both are physically strong and loath wickedness. Both extend their hands to the needy. They laugh. And both teach; their identities and instructions are associated with “fear of YHWH.”
The valiant woman’s activities ennoble place: starting in the home, moving into the local community, out to traders from distant lands, and then returning back home again in the end. Like Woman Wisdom’s vision of the world (8:22-31), this woman’s work touches every part of the known world, and it involves development or care for every area of creation. Her activities encompass time: Rising early and staying up late, in winter, planting and harvest, her work is unbounded by days or years or seasons. Her wisdom involves the whole body in work: hands, eyes, arms, mouth, tongue, mind.