Continual dropping - Here, as in the marginal reference, the flat, earthen roof of Eastern houses, always liable to cracks and leakage, supplies the groundwork of the similitude.

A continual dropping - See Proverbs 19:13.

A continual dropping in a very rainy day,.... That is, through the roof of a house which is not well covered, or which lets in rain by one means or another; so that in a thorough rainy day it keeps continually dropping, to the great annoyance of those within, and which is very uncomfortable to them: it is observed (g) that rain is called by the name in the text, because a man is shut up under a roof falls; and continuing long he is shut up within doors and cannot come out;
and a contentious woman are alike; troublesome and uncomfortable; as in a rainy day, a man cannot go abroad with any pleasure, and if the rain is continually dropping upon him in his house he cannot sit there with any comfort; and so a contentious woman, that is always scolding and brawling, a man has no comfort at home; and if he goes abroad he is jeered and laughed at on her account by others; and perhaps she the more severely falls upon him when he returns for having been abroad; see Proverbs 19:13.
(g) David de Pomis, Lexic. fol. 107. 3.

The contentions of a neighbour may be like a sharp shower, troublesome for a time; the contentions of a wife are like constant rain.

(Compare Proverbs 19:13).
very . . . day--literally, "a day of showers."

This proverb passes from the complimentarius to its opposite, a shrewish wife:
A continual dropping in a rainy day
And a contentious woman are alike.
Thus we have already translated (vol. i. p. 9), where, when treating of the manifold forms of parabolic proverbs, we began with this least poetic, but at the same time remarked that Proverbs 27:15 and Proverbs 27:16 are connected, forming a tetrastich, which is certainly the case according to the text here lying before us. In Proverbs 27:15, Proverbs 19:13 is expanded into a distich, and made a complete verse. Regarding דּלף טורד, vid., the explanation there given. The noun סגריר, which the Syr. translates by magyaa', but the Targumist retains, because it is in common use in the post-bibl. Hebrews. (Bereschith rabba, c. 1) and the Jewish Aramaic, signifies violent rain, after the Jewish interpreters, because then the people remain shut up in their houses; more correctly, perhaps, from the unbroken continuousness and thickness (cf. the Arab. insajara, to go behind each other in close column) with which the rain pours down. Regarding מדונים, Kerı̂ מדינים, vid., Proverbs 6:14; the genit. connection of 'אושׁת מ we have already at Proverbs 21:9. The form נשׁתּוה is doubtful. If accented, with Lwenstein and others, as Milra, then we would have a Nithkatal before us, as at Numbers 1:47, or a Hothkatal - a passive form of the Kal, the existence of which, however, is not fully established. Rather this word is to be regarded as נשׁתּוּה (Nithpa. as Deuteronomy 21:8; Ezekiel 23:48) without the dagesh, and lengthened; the form of the word נשׁתּוה, as found in the Cod. Jaman., aims at this. But the form נשׁתּוה is better established, e.g., by Cod. 1294, as Milel. Kimchi, Michlol 131a (cf. Ewald, 132c), regards it as a form without the dagesh, made up the Niph. and Hithpa., leaving the penultima toning unexplained. Bertheau regards it as a voluntative: let us compare (as נשׁתּעה, Isaiah 41:23); but as he himself says, the reflexive form does not accord with this sense. Hitzig has adopted the right explanation (cf. Olshausen, 275, and Bttcher, 1072, who, however, registers it at random as an Ephraimitism). נשׁתּוה is a Niphal, with a transposition of consonants for נשׁותה, since נשׁותה passes over into נשׁתּוה. Such is now the genus in the arrangement; the Milra form would be as masc. syntactically inaccurate. "The finite following the subjects is regulated by the gender and number of that which is next before it, as at 2-Samuel 3:22; 2-Samuel 20:20; Psalm 55:6; Job 19:15" (Hitzig).