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# Proverbs and Dating
- URL: https://www.drdakennebrew.com/proverbs-and-dating/
- Published: 2026-09-09T16:29:45.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-09T16:29:45.000Z
- Author: Dr. Delesslyn A Kennebrew

I am reading one proverb a day from the Book of Proverbs, the 20th book in the Christian Bible. It is the wisdom book and that is why most people encourage others to read it. There is plenty of practical advice for your life, finances, business, and relationships with family, friends, and neighbors. However, there is something about relationships that keeps coming up over and over again. The advice about romantic relationships, specifically romantic relationships from a male perspective in how to engage or avoid certain women.

I admit to you that now as I read the parts about romantic relationships, I substitute woman for man, she for he. I understand that this is written from a father to a son so it makes sense that he would share advice from this perspective. Yet, I am disappointed that there is no explicit statement in my reading so far, that says this can also be for his daughters too.

I am well aware of the gender biases present in the text, but as a single woman who does not fit the mysterious woman prototype that Solomon is teaching his son to avoid, I think that women get shortchanged because of his own personal moral failures. He gives advice about the women that have tripped him up because he has not been able to control his own hormones and natural proclivities to take full advantage of these pleasurable escapades.

So, the characterization of women in proverbs is mostly negative until the very last chapter when he decides to describe, probably his ideally unattainable picture of a woman. I do not say unattainable in the sense that women cannot embody the entirety of the description in Proverbs 31\. I do say unattainable in the sense that if there was a woman who did embody the entirety of the description in Proverbs 31, she more than likely would not want to be with him.

Perhaps that is one of the problems I am coming to realize in these dating streets. There are indeed so many gifted, talented, beautiful, and prosperous Proverbs 31 women but there are so many less men who are able to meet their standards. So men focus on the mysterious women that they will manipulate and advise others to avoid while critiquing the Proverbs 31 women for setting their standards too high.

 Nope! 

Our standards are not too high! 

You have been reading Proverbs from a male perspective and Solomon has you all twisted giving red pill advice based on mysterious women and not Proverbs 31 women.

You are out of the league of a Proverbs 31 woman and so the advice you give is irrelevant to her and to the men who are able to stand at the gates and call a women who embodies Proverbs 31 blessed.

I am still processing this revelation. But it is truly helping me to better understand what I am hearing in the dating advice that has wearied me. Until there is a man who can rise and call me blessed because of who I already am, not for what he can add to my life or how he can make my life fit into his world, I think I am good on dating.

Greetings!

Nice to meet you.

Do you know how to date, court, engage, and prepare to marry a Proverbs 31 woman? Yes or No.

Because that is the real question.

If your perspective and advice is based on the relationship rambles of Proverbs 1-30, then you, my dear sir, or unqualified. And to face the truth of your disqualification is hard.

Solomon could not have who he really wanted. That is what I think. So, he spends most of the wisdom book criticizing the women he found attractive and pursued but then he got burnt over and over and over again.

And please be clear. I think that Solomon would have started with Proverbs 31 if he was talking to his daughter. He would have set the bar so high for her so she could intentionally avoid men, mysterious men, like her father…and grandfather…and dare I say her brothers.