This verse closes the alphabetic poem, Proverbs 31:10–31, and the book of Proverbs.
Quick answer
The alphabet's last letter is a command to the reader: give her what her hands have earned, and let her works be praised in the gates, publicly, where the elders sit. The book of Proverbs ends by telling you to go honor someone.
Read the whole unit
The book closes with a 22-verse acrostic, one verse for each Hebrew letter, aleph to tav, the way love makes lists, so that when the alphabet runs out you know nothing was left unsaid. The poem stands immediately after a mother's counsel to a king (31:1–9). Whether or not the mother is also the poem's speaker, its placement trains the reader, men included, to recognize and praise wisdom embodied in a woman.
Its subject is an eshet chayil, a woman of strength, capability, and valor. Chayil is a broad Hebrew word for strength, capability, resources, and standing, frequently used of warriors and capable people, and the poem inventories her formidable agency: commerce, agriculture, management, generosity, foresight, teaching, and laughter at the future. Its climax states the governing center: a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised (v. 30). Praised, not scored. This is a hymn of honor, not a weekly job description, and every member entry carries that frame, because the checklist misreading is this poem's one great occupational hazard.
What this verse contributes
This verse contributes the poem's charge and the book's final word. Everything until now described her; the last letter turns and addresses you: give her, let her works praise her. Honor is moved from feeling to act, and its venue is specified, the gates, the most public square the city had, where her husband sat in v. 23 and where her praise now belongs too. The book that opened with the fear of the LORD as knowledge's beginning closes with wisdom's fruit publicly crowned, and there is no better summary of everything between: wisdom is real, it is embodied, it is often embodied where the world forgets to look, and the reader's last assignment is not to memorize her but to praise her. Proverbs ends, fittingly, with honor given out loud.
Related: Proverbs 3:27 · Matthew 25:21
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.