Grace Answers
Hezekiah's Collection
Proverbs › Chapter 25 › Proverbs 25:24

What Does Proverbs 25:24 Mean?

It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop,Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.Proverbs 25:24 · NKJV

Word for word the same Hebrew as 21:9, carrying the same scribal variant. The full guard is at 21:9 and applies here unchanged.

Quick answer

The identical saying, repeated across collections. Peace in a bad spot beats conflict in a good one, and the verse is about a household at war rather than about women.

Read both lines

The repetition is the fact worth explaining. This saying appears at 21:9 in Solomon's collection and again here in the material Hezekiah's men copied, which means two separate collections preserved it independently. Whatever else that indicates, it indicates the saying was widely known and considered worth keeping twice.

The teaching is unchanged. A corner of a flat roof was exposed and uncomfortable, and the trade is deliberately unattractive, because a "better than" saying works by conceding that the alternative has real advantages. Shelter is not the same as peace.

The guard at 21:9 applies here in full and is not repeated: this is not a description of women as a class, the same book praises a woman for twenty-two verses at 31:10–31 and calls a prudent wife a gift from the LORD at 19:14, and where a household's conflict has become abuse this is not the relevant verse.

Related: Proverbs 21:9 · Proverbs 21:19 · Proverbs 19:13 · Proverbs 27:15

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.