Using feminist hermeneutics, space theory, and Bakhtinian criticism, this study seeks to answer these questions. When read via socio-narratological lens, Proverbs 31 forms an event of intervention for the Persian-era Yehudite community negotiating its identity when living under empire, where tensions abound between wealthy urban and impoverished rural inhabitants. This study clarifies how gender constructions and power dynamics within the text promote an elite ideology even as its gaps, ambiguities, and contradictions enable marginalized sectors to resist the damage of such ideology. The socio-narratological lens also enables diverse uses of lived spaces to appear alongside the projected hegemonic ideals of conceived spaces.

Such discoveries contribute to a better understanding of this ancient community processing its context of cooperating with empire in an economic system that benefitted some but exploited others. Expanding options for meaning and recognizing multiple voices within the text liberates marginalized people to see themselves represented in crucial communal texts and to participate in identity constructions and decision making. Strong women make strong communities. The interpretive approach demonstrated in this study can be replicated among communities that use biblical texts to construct for themselves a more just and prosperous world.