The king whose mother's oracle opens Proverbs 31:1-9 — and one of the most obscure named figures in the Bible. He appears nowhere else, in any source. The name means something like 'belonging to God', and like Agur son of Jakeh in the previous chapter he is very likely NOT Israelite: the closing chapters of Proverbs preserve wisdom material from outside Israel, which the book is comfortable including. ⚠ What is genuinely unusual is the attribution. This is the only royal instruction in the Hebrew Bible credited to a QUEEN MOTHER — the oracle 'with which his mother disciplined him' — and it sits immediately before the poem in praise of a woman of valour. Whether that arrangement is deliberate cannot be proved, but the two units share a keyword: verse 3 warns the king not to give his CHAYIL to women, and verse 10 praises a woman OF chayil.