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The Personification Of Sexuality In Proverbs By Keutvim

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Proverbs is an interesting book in the Ketuvim, as it is written seemingly in the form of a patriarchal system of father passing on wisdom to his son, but yet, one of the most vital pieces is the personification of Woman Wisdom. Not only are wisdom and folly personified as woman, there is an inherent sexual nature surrounding their personification-such as in 5:3, talking about the "immoral woman" and how her lips "drip honey", one cannot read these words without understanding the intertwining of intimacy and sexuality within it. This concept is further solidified not only for the Woman Folly, but also for our beloved Woman Wisdom, with the hyper-focus on the lips in 8:6, 16:23-24, and among many other places within the book. From 8:6 where "the opening of my lips will come right things" to …show more content…

The personification of woman as wisdom and folly suggests a polarization that lives between the two worlds. Woman (or simply rather humans, I suggest woman because of the word choices that appear to assume life as seen through the lens of birth) cannot simply have a middle ground, they must play into the tropes of "good" womanhood, the Woman Wisdom, or "harlotry" womanhood, the Woman of Folly-oh how Proverbs hates and fetishizes her! An interesting thought written about this very idea comes from Claudia Camp, a professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Texas Christian University. Camp wrote, "Along with her counterpart, Woman Stranger [Woman Folly, in my paper], she [Woman Wisdom] may be seen as part of patriarchy's perennial classification of all women as either all-good or all-evil…" (Camp). This idea that woman (or maybe more universally humans?) must live in either realm, not a middle is certainly interesting when considering what the author is trying to convey about

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