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Fathers, Mothers, Sons, and Silence: Rhetorical Reconfiguration in Proverbs

In the royal instruction of Proverbs 31:1–9, a Queen Mother exhorts her royal son Lemuel to “open your mouth” on behalf of another, namely those who cannot themselves speak, the mute, the poor, and the needy. While the didactic relationship between mother and son in this passage in part mirrors the relationship between the proverbial father and son in chapters 1–9, the maternal demand for her son to speak on behalf of some silent other distinguishes her teaching. Here, the listening son’s entrance into words, into the art of becoming a verbal advocate in the judicial sphere, points beyond the rhetorical environment offered by the father, who envisions his son as a speaker only insofar as he might repeat the didactic words of the father’s own wisdom discourse.