Pro 12:4 | KingComments | STEP | “An excellent wife” is a ‘stout’, ‘brave’, ‘firm’ wife, a wife who knows her task and performs it with satisfaction. By her performance, she enhances the dignity of her husband. She is his “crown”, his fame, a jewel of honor. When he says something and people know who and how his wife is, it gives his words extra strength. The wife makes this valuable contribution because she answers to God’s purpose with her and that is to be of help to her husband. It is always good, if a servant of the Lord is married, to know what his wife is like, to know who the wife is behind the husband. Boaz tells Ruth that everyone knows she is “a woman of excellence” ( ). Any married woman can be a woman of excellence by being as God purposes her to be (cf. ). The opposite of a wife who is “the crown of her husband” is the wife who “shames” her husband. It does not say what she shames him with, but we can think, for example, of irresponsible spending, neglecting her children and household, excessive talking, immoral behavior. She does not support her husband by her behavior, but renders him powerless in his testimony. The “rottenness in his bones” means that what should give him strength to walk is rotting away from within, rendering him powerless. Bones give firmness and structure to life. A wife who is not of excellence destroys that. She is like the worm in the wood that rots the wood.

‏ Proverbs 12:4

An Excellent Wife

“An excellent wife” is a ‘stout’, ‘brave’, ‘firm’ wife, a wife who knows her task and performs it with satisfaction. By her performance, she enhances the dignity of her husband. She is his “crown”, his fame, a jewel of honor. When he says something and people know who and how his wife is, it gives his words extra strength. The wife makes this valuable contribution because she answers to God’s purpose with her and that is to be of help to her husband.

It is always good, if a servant of the Lord is married, to know what his wife is like, to know who the wife is behind the husband. Boaz tells Ruth that everyone knows she is “a woman of excellence” (Rth 3:11). Any married woman can be a woman of excellence by being as God purposes her to be (cf. Pro 31:10).

The opposite of a wife who is “the crown of her husband” is the wife who “shames” her husband. It does not say what she shames him with, but we can think, for example, of irresponsible spending, neglecting her children and household, excessive talking, immoral behavior. She does not support her husband by her behavior, but renders him powerless in his testimony. The “rottenness in his bones” means that what should give him strength to walk is rotting away from within, rendering him powerless. Bones give firmness and structure to life. A wife who is not of excellence destroys that. She is like the worm in the wood that rots the wood.