Proverbs 31:24

The description, following the order of the letters, now directs attention to the profitable labour of the housewife: 24 ס She prepareth body-linen and selleth it, And girdles doth she give to the Phoenicians. It is a question whether סדין signifies σινδών, cloth from Sindhu, the land of India (vid., at Isa 3:23); the Arab. sadn (sadl), to cause to hang down, to descend (for the purpose of covering or veiling), offers an appropriate verbal root. In the Talmud, סדין is the sleeping linen, the curtain, the embroidered cloth, but particularly a light smock-frock, as summer costume, which was worn on the bare body (cf. Mar 14:51.). Kimchi explains the word by night-shirt; the Edictum Diocletiani, xviii. 16, names σινδόνες κοιταρίαι, as the Papyrus Louvre, ὀθόνια ἐγκοιμήτρια; and the connection in the Edict shows that linen attire (ἐκ λίνου) is meant, although - as with שׁשׁ, so also with סדין - with the ancients and the moderns, sometimes linen and sometimes cotton is spoken of without any distinction. Aethicus speaks of costly girdles, Cosmogr. 84, as fabricated at Jerusalem: baltea regalia ... ex Hierosolyma allata; Jerusalem and Scythopolis were in later times the chief places in Palestine for the art of weaving. In Galilee also, where excellent flax grew, the art of weaving was carried on; and the ὀθόναι, which, according to Clemens Alex. Paedag. ii. 10, p. 239, were exported ἐκ γῆς Ἑβραίων, are at least in their material certainly synon. with σινδόνες. Regarding נתן, syn. מכר, opp. לקח, syn. נשׂא = קנה, vid., at 16a. There is no reason to interpret כּנעני here, with the obliteration of the ethnographical meaning, in the general sense of סחר, trader, merchant; for purple, 22b, is a Phoenician manufacture, and thus, as an article of exchange, can be trans…

This chapter is added to Solomon's proverbs, some think because it is of the same author, supposing king Lemuel to be king Solomon; others only because it is of the same nature, though left in writing by another author, called Lemuel; however it be, it is a prophecy, and therefore given by inspiration and direction of God, which Lemuel was under in the writing of it, and putting it into this form, as his mother was in dictating to him the matter of it. Here is, I. An exhortation to Lemuel, a young prince, to take heed of the sins he would be tempted to and to do the duties of the place he was called to (Pro 31:1-9). II. The description of a virtuous woman, especially in the relation of a wife and the mistress of a family, which Lemuel's mother drew up, not as an encomium of herself, though, no doubt, it was her own true picture, but either as an instruction to her daughters, as the foregoing verses were to her son, or as a direction to her son in the choice of a wife; she must be chaste and modest, diligent and frugal, dutiful to her husband, careful of her family, discreet in her discourse, and in the education of her children, and, above all, conscientious in her duty to God: such a one as this, if he can find her, will make him happy (v. 10-31).