“She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.” Proverbs 31:19

Truthfully, I had decided to skip this verse since it doesn’t pertain to our day and age at all! But that same day, I received the most interesting comment on one of my Facebook posts and decided to use it for this post. It’s excellent! This is what she wrote:

The Proverbs woman didn’t have a business. She didn’t have a career. Making linen took months after waiting for the harvest season or the sheep-shearing season. It would not be a successful business. The linen was probably sold in order to buy salt, millet, or any of the rare commodities of the ancient world, like fragrant oil for a bride. Historically, spinning linen was a slow, tedious, and highly skilled task, taking up a significant portion of a woman’s daily life, as it was done entirely by hand using a drop spindle. While specific daily measurements for linen are not recorded in scripture, experts estimate that producing enough fine yarn for clothing was a constant, time-consuming effort that often took weeks or months to produce enough for a single garment.

Key Aspects of Spindle Production in Bible Times:

Method: Women used a drop spindle (a weighted stick) to turn processed flax fibers into thread, a method that remained unchanged for thousands of years until the invention of the spinning wheel. (The spinning wheel was invented between 500 and 1000 A.D., long after the Proverbs 31 woman lived.)

Continuous Work: Spinning was part of the daily chores for women, often done in the evening after other work was completed or while socializing.

Preparation Time: The process of preparing the flax (retting, drying, beating, and combing) took much longer than the spinning itself, with some preparation phases lasting up to two years.

Skill Level: Producing “fine twined linen” required immense skill, and it was highly praised for women to be adept at this, as mentioned in Proverbs 31:13, 19, and Exodus 35:25.

Constant Effort: Because it was so slow, a household’s supply of linen was built up gradually, one thread at a time.

The entire process, from harvesting and retting the flax to spinning and weaving, was a multi-month endeavor.

Now, can you see why this wasn’t a career for the Proverbs 31 woman, as many claim? It was part of their daily life and chores to have clothing and a tiny bit to sell for those in need. All of her life’s work revolved around her home and her family. She wasn’t involved in some MLM or something else that takes a lot of time and energy. She wasn’t a popular influencer who made podcasts, videos, traveled to speak, and wrote on social media either. She was known for looking well to the ways of her household. This was her work. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

***Here is the next post in the series: She Stretches Out Her Hands to the Poor

***Subscribe to my blog HERE.