A desert is more livable than a house with a contentious and vexing companion.
Solomon repeats his contentious-house comparison with intensification in Proverbs 21:19: It is better to live in a desert land Than with a contentious and vexing woman (v. 19). This verse further intensifies verse 9.
There the earlier alternative was a corner of the roof; here it is a desert. The desert was, for the Israelite imagination, a place of scarcity, exposure, and danger. To say the desert is preferable to a contentious house is to say that some forms of relational disorder are worse than the worst physical conditions a person might endure alone.
Solomon repeats himself here for emphasis, the way Proverbs often does when a point matters more than its first hearing communicates.
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Proverbs 21:19 meaning
Solomon repeats his contentious-house comparison with intensification in Proverbs 21:19: It is better to live in a desert land Than with a contentious and vexing woman (v. 19). This verse further intensifies verse 9.
There the earlier alternative was a corner of the roof; here it is a desert. The desert was, for the Israelite imagination, a place of scarcity, exposure, and danger. To say the desert is preferable to a contentious house is to say that some forms of relational disorder are worse than the worst physical conditions a person might endure alone.
Solomon repeats himself here for emphasis, the way Proverbs often does when a point matters more than its first hearing communicates.