![]() ![]() Some by the "virtuous woman" understand the sensitive soul, subject to the understanding and reason, as Gersom others the Scriptures, as Lyra, which lead to virtue, contain much riches in them, far above rubies in which men may safely confide as the rule of their faith and practice and will do them good, and not evil, continually. But, be this as it will, the description is drawn up to such a pitch, and wrote in such strong lines, as cannot agree with any of the daughters of fallen Adam, literally understood not with Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon nor with the Virgin Mary, as the Papists, who, they fancy, was immaculate and sinless, of which there is no proof nor indeed with any other for though some parts of the description may meet in some, and others in others, yet not all in one wherefore the mystical and spiritual sense of the whole must be sought after. Some think that Bathsheba gave the materials, the sum and substance of this beautiful description, to Solomon who put it in the artificial form it is, each verse beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order till the whole is gone through though rather it seems to be a composition of Solomon's, describing the character and virtues of his mother Bathsheba. This part of the chapter is disjoined from the rest in the Septuagint and Arabic versions and Huetius F20 thinks it is a composition of some other person, and not Lemuel's mother, whose words he supposes end at ( Proverbs 31:9 ) but it is generally thought that what follows to the end of the chapter is a continuance of her words, in which she describes a person as a fit wife for her son.
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