A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.

A foolish son is the grief of his father: and a wrangling wife is like a roof continually dropping through.

A calamity to his father is a foolish son, And the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.

A foolish son is the destruction of his father; and the bitter arguments of a wife are like drops of rain falling without end.

A foolish son is the grief of his father. And an argumentative wife is like a roof that is continually leaking.

Calamity - The Hebrew word is plural (as in Psalm 57:1; Psalm 91:3), and seems to express the multiplied and manifold sorrow caused by the foolish son.
Continual dropping - The irritating, unceasing, sound of the fall, drop after drop, of water through the chinks in the roof.

The contentions of a wife are a continual dropping - The man who has got such a wife is like a tenant who has got a cottage with a bad roof through every part of which the rain either drops or pours. He can neither sit, stand work, nor sleep, without being exposed to these droppings. God help the man who is in such a case, with house or wife!

A foolish son [is] the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife [are] a continual (e) dropping.
(e) As rain that drops and rots the house.

A foolish son is the calamity of his father,.... Or, "the calamities of his father" (q); he brings them to him. A very great affliction he is, and which has many distresses and sorrows in it; as loss of reputation and credit in his family, which is sunk by his behaviour, instead of being supported and increased; loss of substance, through extravagance and riotous living, and the ruin of his soul and body by his wicked practices; see Proverbs 10:1;
and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping; or like the dropping of rain, in a rainy day, into a house out of repair, and which is very uncomfortable to, the inhabitants of it; see Proverbs 27:15. Such are the contentions of a peevish, ill natured, and brawling wife, who is always scolding; and which is a continual vexation to a man, and renders him very uneasy in life: such a continual dropping was Xantippe to Socrates, who teased him night and day with her brawls and contentions (r). A great unhappiness each of these must be!
(q) "calamitates", Vatablus; "aerumnae", Piscator, Michaelis; "causa aerumnarum", Junius & Tremellius. (r) A. Gell. Noct. Attic. l. 1. c. 17.

It shows the vanity of the world, that we are liable to the greatest griefs where we promise ourselves the greatest comfort.

calamity--literally, "calamities," varied and many.
continual dropping--a perpetual annoyance, wearing out patience.

13 A foolish son is destruction for his father,
And a continual dropping are the contentions of a wife.
Regarding הוּת, vid., at Proverbs 17:4, cf. Proverbs 10:3. Line 2a is expanded, Proverbs 27:15, into a distich. The dropping is טרד, properly striking (cf. Arab. tirad, from tarad III, hostile assault) when it pours itself forth, stroke (drop) after stroke = constantly, or with unbroken continuity. Lightning-flashes are called (Jeremiah Berachoth, p. 114, Shitomir's ed.) טורדין, opp. מפסיקין, when they do not follow in intervals, but constantly flash; and b. Bechoroth 44a; דומעות, weeping eyes, דולפות, dropping eyes, and טורדות, eyes always flowing, are distinguished. An old interpreter (vid., R. Ascher in Pesachim II No. 21) explains דלף טרד by: "which drops, and drops, and always drops." An Arab proverb which I once heard from Wetzstein, says that there are three things which make our house intolerable: âlṭaḳḳ (= âldhalf), the trickling through of rain; âlnaḳḳ, the contention of the wife; and âlbaḳḳ, bugs.

Dropping - Are like rain continually dropping upon an house.