One of the most formidable women in the Talmud was Beruriah, wife of Rabbi Meir. She appears mostly in fragments — but in one famous passage she corrects her husband's Hebrew, and in doing so corrects his soul.
A gang of coarse and lawless men had settled near the rabbi's neighborhood and were making his life miserable. Rabbi Meir, worn out, began to pray that God would simply take them away — remove them from the earth. He cited the Psalmist: "Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more" (Psalm 104:35).
Beruriah overheard. She walked into the room and reasoned with him like a fellow scholar.
"Is it because it is written, 'Let the sinners be consumed'? But the word there is not chot'im, sinners — it is chata'im, sins. And the verse continues, 'and the wicked will be no more.' The meaning is: let the sins cease, and the wicked will cease too. Pray instead that they repent, and then there will be no wicked."
Rabbi Meir accepted the correction. He prayed not for the destruction of the men but for their turning. And the verse he had once wielded as a weapon became, in his wife's hands, an argument for patience. The men repented, and they troubled him no more.
Of her Proverbs 31:26 might have been written: "She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the Torah of kindness."