The second of two consecutive "better than" sayings, pairing with verse 16.
Quick answer
A plate of vegetables at a table with love beats a feast served in a house full of hate. What is on the table matters less than who is around it.
Read both lines
The comparison is a meal against a meal, and the ancient stakes are sharper than they sound. A "dinner of herbs" is the NKJV's footnoted vegetables, everyday poor-man's food; a fatted calf was celebration food, the animal deliberately raised for the best occasion of the year. The verse takes the most festive meal an Israelite could picture and ruins it with one ingredient. Hatred at the table does not merely spoil the mood; it makes the abundance itself a kind of mockery, since everyone present can see the gap between what is served and what is felt. The proverb's cousin at 17:1 prefers a dry crust with quiet, which is the same trade at an even steeper discount.
Related: Proverbs 17:1 · Proverbs 15:16
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.