A critical review of contemporary scholarship: conceptualizing an ideal wife of proverbs 31:10-31

Abstract

This article explores the contemporary conceptualizations and advocacies on an ideal wife as presented in extant literature in African scholarship. In the wake of women’s emancipation, empowerment and capitalistic economy, coupled with contemporary challenges of poverty, HIV-Aids and resilience of African patriarchy, there is a growing academic concern that seeks to revisit and redefine the concept of an ideal wife in African marriages. Various scholarships have revisited and interpreted the biblical text of Proverbs 31:10-31 in the context of contemporary developments and challenges. The current article is a critical review of these scholarships with the objective of examining how varying circumstances of these scholars contribute to the debate and advocacy for an empowering hermeneutical appropriation of the biblical concept of an ideal wife. By and large, the outcome of the analyses is that the interpretations, perceptions and appropriations are informed by the writers’ gender and contemporary socio-economic circumstances, which become the points of departure for interrogating the cultural construct of wifehood.