Distaff

The distaff is the small hand-tool that holds raw fiber while the spinner draws and twists it onto the spindle. Scripture mentions it once by name, in the portrait of the worthy woman, and the surrounding text shows the same craft as the regular work of skilled women.

A Tool of the Capable Woman

The lone explicit reference comes in the closing acrostic of Proverbs: "She lays her hands to the distaff, / And her hands hold the spindle" (Pr 31:19). The two implements are paired and held together — distaff in one hand, spindle in the other. The line places the work in the hands themselves, a hands-on craft that the woman of the poem performs as part of her wider household competence.

Spinning as Skilled Work

The same craft, without the tool's name, surrounds the building of the tabernacle. There the spinning is gathered from "all the women who were wise-hearted": "And all the women who were wise-hearted spun with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, the blue, and the purple, the scarlet, and the fine linen" (Ex 35:25). The verse names the four threads of the sanctuary's textiles and locates their production in the hands of the wise-hearted women. The Proverbs portrait stands inside that same tradition of skilled female handiwork — the distaff and spindle are the tools by which such thread is made.