Proverbs 11:22
Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+11%3A22&version=ESV]
One consistent theme of Proverbs is the superiority of wisdom to the carnal pleasures which so often overshadow it. A gold ring is beautiful and precious, without a doubt, and likewise a woman may be beautiful and physically worthy of desire. Nevertheless, just as a gold ring is overshadowed by the pig’s snout it has been placed within, so beauty in a woman can pale before her inner ugliness.
To be clear, discretion does not mean ‘tact’ as the author here uses it. Tact may be a part of discretion, but the virtue encompasses much more than that. Discretion is the ability to consider and choose with wisdom, based off of what is true and what is right, not off of what sounds good and what looks good.
A woman without discretion is a woman who chooses not with the wisdom God grants His people but with the vagaries and fancies of her passions. A woman like this brings only ruin, in contrast to the woman of Proverbs 31, who “open her mouth with wisdom” and has “the teaching of kindness… on her tongue.” Both women and men can be as beautiful as the day is long in Antarctica, but if they lack discretion, they are, as this passage says so eloquently, “like a gold ring in a pig’s snout.”
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
