"Hear, My Daughter, the Instructions of Your Mother!"

Abstract

The prevalence of admonitions to the young man in the instructions in Prov 1–9 is well attested, but this article decries the dearth of admonitions to the young girl in the unit. Whereas it acknowledges the social historical context of the text and the postulations of a school setting origin for the instructions, without precluding a family setting, it points out that the application of the instructions also took (and takes) place in familial settings. The fact that the admonitions were aimed primarily at helping the young man to navigate life in the public arena and, in particular, in the city suggests that the instructions to the young female were overlooked/underplayed, possibly because she was less visible in the public sphere. The emphasis of the text on guiding the young man without giving much thought to the needs of the young female adult resonates with a view of gender which privileges the male child over the female in many African contexts. It is argued that the contemporary discourse on gender and family in the African setting can be enriched by the degenderised ethos embedded in selected Yorùbá and Sotho proverbs presented in this article, which fills the gender gap observed in the Hebrew Bible admonitions of Prov 1–9. The study, therefore, is a quest as well as a call for the construction of new texts and fresh interpretations that will admonish and take into account the visibility of the young woman in today’s public space and that will help invalidate some of the gender disparities observable in many African cultural and family settings.