Proverbs 31 study- Who is Lemuel?

Last night I watched the first half of the movie called Limitless. It was very interesting. I had to go to bed as I was waited from the busy day but I've been thinking about it tonight. Apparently we only use 20% of our brains as humans. In this movie, there is a pill, a very expensive pill which allows you to use all 100% of the brain. So this man starts taking these pills every day and pretty much becomes the smartest man in the world, investing money and quintupling it every day becoming more and more rich. He is able to learn and be fluent in new languages in days along with playing the most difficult sonatas on the piano. All of a sudden he sees the world in a different view because he knows it all. What if we did this with scripture? What if we knew it all? How do you think Christians would be and act like if we had the whole scripture memorized? I am not proposing that we memorize the whole bible together but over the last 2 weeks I have dedicated my free time to memorizing scripture. I have only 2 new verses memorized but do you want to know how many times I thought about them this week? Only all day every day, constantly meditating on the words He gives us. Do you want to know how many conversations they came into? All of them (not all of them were verbalized). This was a complete revelation to me. A few months ago I started memorizing James. I can't believe I still remember what I learned and how it is constantly applied in my life. The Bible tells us to live by the word and that's exactly what I plan to (try to) do. I am starting with my favorite. Proverbs 31. I want to encourage you to imagine what it would be like to know what the whole thing says, know where everything is, imagine what conversations would look like if you could encourage people with scripture instead of "I know it says somewhere in the bible...". Now don't just imagine it; fall in love with it and know it!

I have gone through Proverbs 31 many times over the last year, and when I feel myself lacking as a wife and mother, I go here to regain the strength I need to keep the day going smoothly (Along with many other places in scripture.) I am not going to start half way through as most studies do but I want to know the precursor to "the wife of noble character".

WHO IS KING LEMUEL? Verse 1 says this: The words of King Lemuel. An Oracle that his mother taught him:

I wanted to start this study with the background of this king. Now I don't know for certain but I have done a little research and I believe this is Solomon. First of all, King Solomon wrote the proverbs. Second of all, the ancient Rabbinical commentators identified Lemuel with Solomon. So from here on out, I will imagine this proverb to have been written by Solomon given to him by his Mother. Besides who this king is, this has been given to him by him mother. Doesn't that seem strange? Well, he doesn't have a wife yet, clearly since she's telling him how to know a good woman when he sees one. Now if this is Solomon, then this is Bathsheba; the woman bathing on the roof that David wants and takes. Now, Bathsheba sleeps with David while married to Uriah, making her an adulterer. Eventually David kills Uriah and at this point Bathsheba is his wife. Maybe she knows all these great things because she wasn't one. I don't know that though, so I will have to do a little more research. So for now, we'll call it a night. Interesting how things get connected when you go back to try to figure them out. I encourage you to do your own research. Any questions that might pop up, write them down and then answer them. Discover it for yourself.