Rebbetzin Chava Kuperman
Last week, we began examining the song “Eshet Chayil.” Today, we will return to it and try to explore it more deeply.
With anything that has a certain span, the most important parts are the beginning and the end.
(This applies, for example, to a journey, which you must set out on but must also complete so that, at the end, you reach your intended destination; it applies to building the Temple, or simply a residential building, or indeed any structure; it applies to cooking, pregnancy, cultivating a field... Take away the beginning or the end, and you are left with nothing!)
Eshet Chayil concludes Solomon’s Proverbs. And this is no coincidence.
As the oral tradition says, if a man has a good wife, there is no limit to the good she will do for him. If his wife is bad, there is no limit to the evil she will do to her husband.
On the plain level, Eshet Chayil, of course, symbolizes Woman. But we understand that everything in Solomon’s Proverbs also has deeper levels, a whole series of levels.
For example, Solomon compares the Torah, the Jewish people, and the soul to a woman. The fact that the song Eshet Chayil concludes the book of Mishlei, crowning it, as it were, shows how important Woman is in Solomon’s view.
The oral tradition says that each line in Eshet Chayil corresponds to one of our righteous women.
According to another tradition, Solomon included in Mishlei certain things that had been said before his time. Thus, according to tradition, the first to recite Eshet Chayil was Abraham, as he mourned Sarah.
Eshet Chayil symbolizes a woman who can do everything. The first verse speaks of her with admiration.
“Who can find such a perfect wife? Her value is greater than pearls”…
So perfect that she is ‘more precious than pearls’? What does this comparison to pearls mean? Why do pearls pale beside a woman?
In Hebrew, pearls are peninim — meaning that which is inside. To find pearls, you must dive (deep down, beneath the water) and find a shell. Then you must open the shell and bring the precious grain, the pearl, out into the light. Thus, a pearl is inside something twice over. A woman is symbolized by modesty and being hidden from view. She is the one who can do everything, yet does not put herself first; she always remains in the shadows, within the home and family — behind her husband. She is active and very modest.
The question ‘Who can find such a perfect wife?’ is understood to allude to Noah’s wife. In Noah’s generation, it was almost impossible to find such a righteous woman. During the Flood, she and her daughters-in-law had to help Noah care for the animals in the Ark day and night. This required both righteousness and selfless labor.
(Interestingly, Chayil has a gematria of 48, the same gematria as the word for brain (moach). This hints at the fact that a woman is most often the brains of her home, of her family).
“Her husband’s heart trusts in her: what he has earned will not be squandered. She brings him good, and not evil, all the days of her life”…
Her husband’s heart can be at ease: he will lack nothing. According to tradition (one of the opinions), this verse refers to Sarah. Even when she was taken from Abraham twice — first to Pharaoh’s house and then to the house of Abimelech, king of Palestine — her husband’s heart was at ease about her; he trusted her. Neither Pharaoh nor Abimelech dared to defile her. She was on such a high spiritual level that this was utterly impossible. Moreover, she left them with lavish gifts.
“She brings him good, and not evil, all the days of her life”…
An extremely difficult task... It is practically impossible to do only good without causing harm in the process. In everyday life, if we do one thing very well, something else inevitably receives too little of our attention and energy.
(Have you ever tried to prepare a lavish meal and put the house in perfect order at the same time?! Then you know that if the meal turns out well, the house will be tidied only haphazardly, or vice versa; far from every woman can be flawless in everything... If I turn to face someone, someone else can see only the back of my head).
According to Midrash HaGadol, this line refers to Rebecca.
to be continued