The Holy Bible Verses

Proverbs 19:13

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Translations sourced from the public-domain WEB, KJV, and ASV. See all sources.

“A foolish son is the calamity of his father. A wife’s quarrels are a continual dripping.”

— WEB

“A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.”

— KJV

“A foolish son is the calamity of his father; And the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.”

— ASV

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Commentary

It is an instance of the vanity of the world that we are liable to the greatest grief in those things wherein we promise ourselves the greatest comfort. It is as it proves. What greater temporal comfort can a man have than a good wife and good children? Yet, 1. A foolish son is a great affliction, and may make a man wish a thousand times he had been written childless. A son that will apply himself to no study or business, that will take no advice, that lives a lewd, loose, rakish life, and spends what he has extravagantly, games it away and wastes it in the excess of riot, or that is proud, foppish, and conceited, such a one is the grief of his father, because he is the disgrace, and is likely to be the ruin, of his family. He hates all his labour, when he sees to whom he must leave the fruit of it. 2. A cross peevish wife is as great an affliction: Her contentions are continual; every day, and every hour in the day, she finds some occasion to make herself and those about her uneasy. Those that are accustomed to chide never want something or other to chide at; but it is a continual dropping, that is, a continual vexation, as it is to have a house so much out of repair that it rains in and a man cannot lie dry in it.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary (public domain)

calamity--literally, "calamities," varied and many. continual dropping--a perpetual annoyance, wearing out patience.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary (public domain)

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