Part of the four things the earth cannot bear, Proverbs 30:21–23.
Quick answer
The last two, and the first of them is almost certainly not saying what the English suggests. The word behind hateful is passive: she is the one not loved.
Read the whole unit
Four reversals in which someone receives what they cannot carry, or a household is rebuilt around a wound.
Read the whole unit
Four situations that make the ground shake, and this is the unit in the chapter most easily turned into something ugly. Read carelessly it sounds like a complaint about people rising above their station: a slave on a throne, a servant girl in her mistress's place. The book itself blocks that reading, and it does so plainly. 17:2 says a wise servant will rule over a son who causes shame and share the inheritance among the brothers, and it says it with approval. Proverbs is not against a servant rising. It has already said a good one should.
So the four are not about rank. Each names a reversal in which someone receives what they have no capacity to carry, or a household is restructured around a wound. The fool at verse 22 makes that clear, since being filled with food is not a promotion. And the fool is the second occurrence of a verb that has now run through this chapter four times, שָׂבַע, to be full: Agur prayed at verse 9 not to be full and deny God, verses 15 and 16 listed what is never full, and here a fool is.
⚠ The unit's guard, which belongs on every member page: this saying does not license contempt for anyone's origins, and it has never been safe in the hands of people who benefit from other people staying put. A proverb describing the strain of a badly handled reversal cannot be turned into a reason to prevent one. The book that wrote this also wrote 17:2 and 22:2, where the rich and the poor meet together and the LORD is the maker of them all.
What this verse contributes
The two hardest items, and the translation decides the whole reading of the first.
Why translations differ
שְׂנוּאָה is a passive participle, and the NKJV footnotes it Or hated. The direction of the word is what matters: it is something done to her, not something she is. And the NKJV settles its own question elsewhere. At Genesis 29:31 the same translation reads "When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved," footnoting it literally hated, and at Deuteronomy 21:15–17 it uses "loved" and "unloved" four times for a man's two wives. In that Deuteronomy passage the law exists specifically to protect the unloved wife's son from being cheated out of his inheritance.
So the picture is not a nasty woman who somehow found a husband. It is a woman nobody wanted, who is now married, and the household is absorbing everything that was done to her before she arrived. That is a description of a wound moving into a house, not a verdict on a person.
What it does not mean
This verse may not be used to call a woman hateful. Once its own translator's footnote and the same translation's renderings elsewhere point to unloved, using it as a label for a difficult woman is quoting an English word the Hebrew does not clearly support, and quoting it against exactly the person the Torah legislated to protect.
The second item needs the same care. A maidservant displacing her mistress is a reversal, and the strain named is real; the household's whole order changes overnight and old resentments now sit at the top of it. But the saying is describing the shaking, not assigning blame for it, and the unit's guard applies here more than anywhere: the book that wrote this also wrote that a wise servant should rule.
Related: Genesis 29:31 · Deuteronomy 21:15–17 · Proverbs 17:2 · Proverbs 22:2
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.