This verse opens the mother's counsel to a king, Proverbs 31:1–9.
Quick answer
The book's final teachings arrive under a double byline: a king named Lemuel, and the mother who taught him. Proverbs closes with wisdom a son kept because a woman gave it.
Read the whole unit
The book's last chapter opens with a unique voice: the words of King Lemuel, "the utterance which his mother taught him." Lemuel appears nowhere else in Scripture, and the counsel he carries is the only teaching in Proverbs explicitly credited to a woman. Its structure is a queen mother's brief: the triple address of maternal urgency (v. 2), then three dangers ranked by what they cost a king: women who consume royal strength (v. 3), wine that clouds royal judgment (vv. 4–5, with a sharp aside on where strong drink might mercifully go instead, vv. 6–7), and finally the positive charge that everything was protecting: open your mouth for the speechless, judge righteously, plead the cause of the poor and needy (vv. 8–9). The logic runs on vocation. A king's strength, clarity, and voice are not his own; they are held in trust for people who have none of the three. The unit ends, and the acrostic begins, and the book closes with the counsel of a mother followed by the praise of a woman, wisdom's last two teachers both unexpected and both unforgettable.
What this verse contributes
This verse contributes the credentials, and they are striking twice over. Lemuel is unknown, no throne, no dates, no dynasty, which leaves the emphasis exactly where the verse puts it: on the teaching and its source. And the source is his mother, the only teaching in Proverbs explicitly credited to a woman, in a book that began by commanding the reader not to forsake the law of his mother (1:8). A king kept these words into adulthood and had them written down; the counsel that follows earned its place at the Bible's table by surviving in a ruler's memory.
Why translations differ
"The utterance" renders a Hebrew word some scholars and translations take as a place name, making Lemuel "king of Massa," a north Arabian kingdom, rather than the bearer of an oracle. The reading is genuinely debated and changes nothing in the counsel itself; either way, an unknown king carries his mother's wisdom into the canon.
Related: Proverbs 1:8 · 2 Timothy 1:5
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.