Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Proverbs 27:15 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 15. 15A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike”.
Read It With
- Proverbs 27:15–16
Read Proverbs 27:15 with 27:15–16. Read alone, “A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious…” could turn a compressed observation, warning, comparison, or command into a guarantee or complete policy. The full unit establishes: contributes the claim, image, or instruction “A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike”; by 27:16, it contributes the claim, image, or instruction “Whosoever hideth her hideth the wind, and the ointment of his right hand, which bewrayeth itself”. Together the unit concentrates on gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency within “Solomonic sayings copied by Hezekiah's men.”
Why This Verse Appears Here
Proverbs 27:15–16 forms a reviewed local cluster inside “Solomonic sayings copied by Hezekiah's men.” Its lines concentrate on gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency, while each sentence proverb retains its own force and the neighboring database unit does not supply its meaning. Within that relationship, this verse contributes the claim, image, or instruction “A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike”.
Follow the Context
- Opening (27:15): the unit contributes the claim, image, or instruction “A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike”.
- Development (27:15–16): adjacent lines test gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency through parallelism, contrast, motive, image, or consequence.
- Close (27:16): the unit contributes the claim, image, or instruction “Whosoever hideth her hideth the wind, and the ointment of his right hand, which bewrayeth itself”, creating the next supported pause.
What This Verse Is Not Saying
Proverbs 27:15 does not allow “A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious…” to become a universal promise, complete policy, diagnosis, insult, or authorization detached from Proverbs 27:15–16. The verse does not demean women, excuse a partner's aggression, or reduce a complex or unsafe household conflict to a sexist label.
What Remains True
The gendered sayings address fidelity, desire, agency, speech, and household life within an androcentric ancient setting; they must not be generalized into contempt for women. In Proverbs 27:15, that bounded truth is expressed through “A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious…,” not through a promise detached from its literary form.
How It Can Shape Life
- Address recurring household conflict with evidence, mutual responsibility, safe boundaries, and appropriate help without turning the wife-image into a judgment about women.
Teach It Back
Explain Proverbs 27:15's exact role in Proverbs 27:15–16. Distinguish pattern from guarantee, include “A continual dropping in a very rainy day…,” name one uncertainty, and explicitly reject one harmful use.
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Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Proverbs 27:15–16 — Gendered imagery, sexual fidelity, consent, and household agency — A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a…Sources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
The dripping-roof comparison portrays relentless household contention in an androcentric sentence collection; it does not claim that wives or women are uniquely quarrelsome.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Exact location: Proverbs 27:15–16, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Proverbs
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 27:15-27:16
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Proverbs with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
Exact location: NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1168-1171, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 27:15–16
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Proverbs
K. T. Aitken
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Exact location: Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 27:15–16 and the Solomonic sayings copied by Hezekiah's men outline
Open source ↗scholarly monograph chapter abstract and metadata
Context in the Sayings Collections
Stuart Weeks
Oxford University Press, in Early Israelite Wisdom, 2000
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Exact location: Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 27:15–16
Open source ↗open access doctoral thesis
Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between: in search of a real woman in the Book of Proverbs
Jeanette May Hartwell
University of Birmingham, 2017
Supports: Feminist and literary review of Wisdom, Folly, Strange Woman, mothers, wives, women in sentence sayings, and the closing woman of strength.
Exact location: Hartwell, Wisdom, strange or somewhere in between (Birmingham PhD, 2017), pp. 13-25, 132-171, 172-204, 205-244, and 245-260 as relevant to the gendered figures and sayings in Proverbs 27:15–16
Open source ↗