Woman as a Builder
W. Clarkson Proverbs 14:1 Every wise woman builds her house: but the foolish plucks it down with her hands. Where the light of revelation has shone, woman has had a position and a power, an honor and a happiness, such as she has not enjoyed elsewhere. Under the teaching of Christian truth she has been, or is being, rapidly raised to her rightful place, and is becoming all that the Creator intended her to be. We cannot forecast the future, but we may predict that her own especial province, the sphere where she will always shine, will be, as it is now, the home. It is "her house" that she will either build up or pluck down "with her own hands." Whether she will do the one or the other depends on the question whether she shows - I. GOODNESS (moral worth) or GUILT. II. IMPARTIALITY or an unwise and unrighteous preference of one child to another. III. DILIGENCE in the discharge of her household duties, or NEGLIGENCE. IV. KINDNESS OR ASPERITY in her bearing toward all the members of the home. V. PATIENCE OR IMPATIENCE in the government of her family and her servants. And since the upbuilding or the down plucking of "the house," the promotion or the ruin of domestic harmony and happiness, depends in so large a degree on the wisdom or the folly of the woman who is the wife and the mother, therefore: 1. Let every wise man think many times before he makes his choice. 2. Let every woman who is entering on this estate go forth to occupy it in (1) humility, (2) prayerfulness, (3) wise and holy resolution. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands. WEB: Every wise woman builds her house, but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands.