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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 31:24 - 31:24
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The description, following the order of the letters, now directs attention to the profitable labour of the housewife:
24 ס She prepareth body-linen and selleth it,
And girdles doth she give to the Phoenicians.
It is a question whether סָדִין signifies σινδών, cloth from Sindhu, the land of India (vid., at Isa 3:23); the Arab. sadn (sadl), to cause to hang down, to descend (for the purpose of covering or veiling), offers an appropriate verbal root. In the Talmud, סדין is the sleeping linen, the curtain, the embroidered cloth, but particularly a light smock-frock, as summer costume, which was worn on the bare body (cf. Mar 14:51.). Kimchi explains the word by night-shirt; the Edictum Diocletiani, xviii. 16, names σινδόνες κοιταρίαι, as the Papyrus Louvre, ὀθόνια ἐγκοιμήτρια; and the connection in the Edict shows that linen attire (ἐκ λίνου) is meant, although - as with שׁשֵׁ, so also with סדין - with the ancients and the moderns, sometimes linen and sometimes cotton is spoken of without any distinction. Aethicus speaks of costly girdles, Cosmogr. 84, as fabricated at Jerusalem: baltea regalia ... ex Hierosolyma allata; Jerusalem and Scythopolis were in later times the chief places in Palestine for the art of weaving. In Galilee also, where excellent flax grew, the art of weaving was carried on; and the ὀθόναι, which, according to Clemens Alex. Paedag. ii. 10, p. 239, were exported ἐκ γῆς Ἑβραίων, are at least in their material certainly synon. with σινδόνες. Regarding נָתַן, syn. מָכַר, opp. לָקַח, syn. נָשָׂא = קָנָה, vid., at 16a. There is no reason to interpret כְּנַֽעֲנִי here, with the obliteration of the ethnographical meaning, in the general sense of סֹחֵר, trader, merchant; for purple, 22b, is a Phoenician manufacture, and thus, as an article of exchange, can be transferred to the possession of the industrious wife.