A continual dripping on a very rainy dayAnd a contentious woman are alike;
Whoever restrains her restrains the wind,And grasps oil with his right hand.
Proverbs 27:15–16 · NKJVPart of The Contentious Wife and the Wind, Proverbs 27:15–16.
Quick answer
The second half is about the man's attempt to manage it, and it says the attempt does not work. Holding the wind and gripping oil are two pictures of the same failure.
Read the whole unit
Read the whole unit
The first verse takes chapter 19's dripping image and makes it worse by adding weather. There the drip was simply continual; here it is continual on a very rainy day, so the roof is failing at the exact moment shelter was the whole point. Anyone who has been in a home that offered no rest recognizes the difference between an inconvenience and that.
The second verse turns to the man and describes what he has been doing about it. Both images are of things that cannot be held. The wind passes through a closed hand; oil escapes precisely because you tighten your grip. The Hebrew of this verse is genuinely difficult and translations vary considerably, with the NKJV footnoting "restrains" as literally hides. What survives every reading is the futility.
And that futility is the pair's most useful contribution, because it says something the first verse alone does not. The man's instinct is to control the situation, and the saying tells him it will not work. It does not tell him to try harder or to assert himself. It tells him that this is not a problem management solves.
What it does not mean
This is not a description of women as a class, and the guard from 21:9 applies here in full. The same book praises a woman for twenty-two verses at 31:10–31, calls a prudent wife a gift from the LORD at 19:14, and describes contentious men without generalizing from them. A saying written from inside a marriage by one half of it is not a diagnosis a husband may hand his wife.
And where the conflict has become abuse, this is not the relevant verse. The catalog's standing rule holds: a proverb may never be used to keep someone where they are being harmed. That applies in both directions here, since a woman living with a man who reaches for this verse is in the situation the rule is written to protect.
What this verse contributes
the response, and its failure. The saying rules out control as the answer without yet saying what is.
The other half
A house in constant conflict is a leak during a downpour: the one place you went to get out of the weather is letting it in. The verse is about a household at war, not about women.
Related: Proverbs 21:9 · Proverbs 21:19 · Proverbs 25:24 · Proverbs 19:13 · Proverbs 19:14
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.