What Does Proverbs 19:13 Mean in the King James?
A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Household distress can arrive as a single calamity or as a drip whose repeated disturbance wears down the home.
THE MEANING
The verse places a father’s calamity beside a wife’s contentions, comparing those disputes to a drip that keeps troubling the household. One strain lands as ruin; the other returns in small, persistent drops.
THE ROOT
טֹרֵד
tored
GROWS FROM
טרד
To trouble, disturb, or drive away.
The word translated “continual” comes from a root of disturbance and driving away. Paired with a drip, it pictures more than repetition: a recurring disturbance that keeps pressing on the home.
ALSO GROWS
tarad: To disturb or drive away.
טָרַד
This is the action beneath the verse’s description of an unrelenting drip.
tored: Troubling or persistent.
טֹרֵד
The form used here gives the drip its ongoing, disturbing force.
מִדְיְנֵי
midyenei
GROWS FROM
דין
To judge, plead, or contend.
The word for “contentions” belongs to the דין family of judging and pleading. English conveys the quarrel; the root also evokes a case that keeps being reopened, so the household remains caught in dispute.
ALSO GROWS
din: Judgment or a case to be decided.
דִּין
It shows the adjudicative sense carried by the root beneath the disputes.
madon: Strife or contention.
מָדוֹן
This related word makes the root’s link between dispute and judgment visible.
THE PATTERN
A small source of strain can shape what surrounds it when it keeps returning or goes unchecked.
A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!THE THREAD
A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.The same image of a persistent drip and contention appears again, making the comparison in Proverbs 19:13 explicit. The recurring disturbance is the point: conflict can wear at a home through its steady return.
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