What Does Proverbs 27:15 Mean in the King James?
A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.
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
The verse shows how a home can be worn down by what never stops, even when each drop seems too small to matter.
THE MEANING
A contentious woman is compared to a leak that keeps dripping through a rainy day: the strain comes through repetition. This speaks now wherever recurring quarrels turn a place meant for shelter into a place of exposure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that a quarrel is harmless because each one ends quickly; repeated contention can become the steady leak that wears down a home.
THE ROOT
דֶּלֶף
deleph
GROWS FROM
דלף
dalaph
to drip or leak, letting water fall drop by drop
“dropping” in this verse is deleph. The image is not one sudden flood but a leak that keeps finding its way in. The root makes persistence visible: the damage gathers through drops that seem small on their own.
ALSO GROWS
dalaph: to drip or leak
דָּלַף
The verb names the repeated action behind the proverb’s image.
dolef: dripping or leaking
דֹּלֵף
This participle presents the leak as ongoing, matching the verse’s unbroken recurrence.
מִדְיָנִים
midyanim
GROWS FROM
דין
din
to judge, plead, or contend
“contentious” in this verse is midyanim. The phrase describes a woman amid quarrels, bringing the conflict itself into focus. The word-family’s links to judging and pleading add the sense of claims continually pressing against one another.
ALSO GROWS
din: judgment or pleading
דִּין
This branch carries the sense of weighing or pressing a claim, a shape contention can take.
madon: strife or contention
מָדוֹן
This related noun names the quarrel itself, making the household strain a recurring condition rather than a single dispute.
THE PATTERN
Repeated, seemingly small disturbances can wear down a place meant to provide shelter.
A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?THE THREAD
A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.This verse names the same pairing directly: a wife’s contentions are a continual drip. The shared דֶּלֶף (deleph, drip or leak) image makes the mechanism plain: recurring quarrels keep finding their way into the home.
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