Audio Transcript
Last time, last week, we talked about women in ministry: silent women versus speaking women in 1 Timothy 2:12. That was APJ 2174. Today we look at women and beauty in a selfie culture — particularly, how feminine beauty gets abused. And we get there from this question from Lisa, asking about a verse in our Bible reading this week — one that, until now, has never appeared on the podcast: Proverbs 11:22.
“Pastor John, hello, and thank you for taking my question. As a woman living in a culture that heavily emphasizes physical beauty, I find Proverbs 11:22 striking and convicting. ‘Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.’ Could you explain the meaning behind this metaphor? Why does Scripture compare a beautiful woman without discretion to a pig with a gold ring? What exactly does it mean to lack discretion in this context? And more personally, how can I discern whether I am prioritizing external beauty over godly character? What practical steps can I take to guard my heart against the temptation to focus on appearance at the expense of wisdom and discretion?”
Beauty and Pleasing God
Well, this is a striking verse. “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion” (Proverbs 11:22). It’s not only striking; it’s disgusting — and I think it’s intended to be. Pigs were not only ritually unclean in Israel (for example, Israel was not allowed to eat ham or bacon); they were also, and they are today, notoriously filthy animals. They love mud. They stick their faces in the slop as they eat. It’s not an accident that the word swine is an extremely derogatory word.
On the other hand, a gold ring is beautiful. It’s gold. Gold is precious. It’s expensive. Rings were used in honorable ways for beautification. For example, Abraham’s servant, remember, put a gold ring on Rebekah’s nose to honor her and celebrate that God had prospered his way to find a wife for Isaac. And the comparison, then, that the writer makes is that the gold ring of beauty and honor and value is like the physical beauty of a woman. That’s the comparison. The gold ring is like a woman’s physical beauty. In other words, it’s a good thing. That’s the first thing to say: It’s a good thing. Beauty’s not bad.
For example, Esther and Abigail are both described as discerning and beautiful (Esther 2:7; 1 Samuel 25:3). If God has made a man handsome and a woman beautiful, they don’t need to apologize for it. It’s a free, undeserved gift. Everybody should think about that. We came into the world, and it owes nothing to us: how we were born, who our parents were. And beauty is not only a gift; it is dangerous — just like being homely, or just ordinary and plain, is a gift and a danger. Everything hangs on what we do with our gifts. We can please God and bless people with beauty (and yes, with homeliness — yes, we can; I’ve seen it done). Or we can be conceited and sensual with our beauty, and we can be self-pitying and slovenly with our homeliness.
Good looks and bad looks are simply not the most important thing. They are not essential to God-pleasing personhood. And I think that last point, “They’re not essential to God-pleasing personhood,” is what Proverbs 11:22 is getting at. “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.” In other words, if God has given you the gift of physical beauty, and that beauty is not in the service of godliness, then it may as well have been given to a pig. In other words, the beauty is being wasted on you like a gold ring is wasted on a pig. The way not to waste physical beauty is to realize that it is meant as a pointer to moral and spiritual beauty.
Discretion and Fearing God
The word translated discretion (ṭā‘am) — “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion” — is often translated taste. So, to have discretion is to have discerning taste, not just in food, but in comportment, dress, adornment, behavior. The word is translated “good judgment” in Psalm 119:66. It’s used in Proverbs 26:16 for the ability to answer with sensible wisdom. And we know that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).
“The way not to waste physical beauty is to realize that it is meant as a pointer to moral and spiritual beauty.”
The fear of the Lord is the root and heart of discretion and discernment and good judgment. So, when Proverbs 31:30 says, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain [empty], but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised,” we understand that what keeps physical beauty from being vain or empty or useless or wasted is the discretion that is rooted in the fear of the Lord. All the beauty in the world is meant to call attention to the beauty of our Creator and, in a lesser way, to the beauty of his children’s godly character.
Pigs, on the other hand, do not know what to do with a gold ring in their noses. They don’t know what to do with it, just like ungodly women who lack discretion don’t know what to do with their physical beauty. So, a pig sticks his nose, with its beautiful ring, in the mud and in the slop that he’s being given for food. And so, women without discretion and godliness and wisdom misuse their physical beauty. They make it dirty. They use it to prop up their sagging egos with sensuality. They use it to exert power over unworthy men. They use it to stroke their need for superiority over other women. Or worse, they prostitute themselves and throw away God’s good gift of beauty.
The main point, I think, is clear. Physical beauty in and of itself is not essential to God-pleasing personhood. Physical beauty is a gift of God, and everything hangs on what to do with it. If you’re pig-like in lacking discretion and wisdom and godliness and fear of the Lord, then you will push your ring of beauty into the slop that the world calls glamour.
Judgment and Honoring God
God has a very different view of such misuse. Listen to these terrible words from Isaiah 3:16–24.
The Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet, therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarves . . . the perfume boxes . . . the signet rings and nose rings. . . . Instead of perfume there will be rottenness.
God has told us how to avoid this kind of judgment. For example, in 1 Peter 3:4 he says, “Let your adorning” — speaking to the wives especially, the women — “be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.” And 1 Timothy 2:9–10: “Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control . . . [and] with what is proper for women who profess godliness — [namely] with good works.”
So, physical beauty is a gift from God; everything hangs on how it’s used. It’s not essential to God-pleasing personhood. It is meant to adorn that personhood and point to a far greater beauty, the beauty of godliness and the fear of the Lord and faith in Jesus Christ and obedient devotion to him.
