The longer Solomon played the fool when it came to women, the more the ideal woman haunted him. Proverbs 31:10–31 is, we will assume, his ode to the one woman in the world he could never have. Was he perhaps thinking of the Shulamite—the woman about whom he wrote his famous song? How rare she was, this model woman who haunted Solomon’s dreams. “Who can find a virtuous woman?” he wrote, “for her price is far above rubies” (Proverbs 31:10). The Hebrew word
Proverbs 31:10