Proverbs 30:23

For an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(23) For an odious woman when she is married.—She pays off, with interest, the slights which she had formerly to endure from her married friends.

An handmaid that is heir to her mistress, and who is nervously anxious to preserve her newly-acquired dignity.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

30:10 Slander not a servant to his master, accuse him not in small matters, to make mischief. 11-14. In every age there are monsters of ingratitude who ill-treat their parents. Many persuade themselves they are holy persons, whose hearts are full of sin, and who practise secret wickedness. There are others whose lofty pride is manifest. There have also been cruel monsters in every age. 15-17. Cruelty and covetousness are two daughters of the horseleech, that still cry, Give, give, and they are continually uneasy to themselves. Four things never are satisfied, to which these devourers are compared. Those are never rich that are always coveting. And many who have come to a bad end, have owned that their wicked courses began by despising their parents' authority. 18-20. Four things cannot be fully known. The kingdom of nature is full of marvels. The fourth is a mystery of iniquity; the cursed arts by which a vile seducer gains the affections of a female; and the arts which a vile woman uses to conceal her wickedness. 21-23 Four sorts of persons are very troublesome. Men of low origin and base spirit, who, getting authority, become tyrants. Foolish and violent men indulging in excesses. A woman of a contentious spirit and vicious habits. A servant who has obtained undue influence. Let those whom Providence has advanced from low beginnings, carefully watch against that sin which most easily besets them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Odious woman - One in whom there is nothing loveable. Marriage, which to most women is the state in which they find scope for their highest qualities, becomes to her only a sphere in which to make herself and others miserable.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

23. heir … mistress—that is, takes her place as a wife (Ge 16:4).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Odious; proud, and perverse, and full of hateful and offensive qualities.

When she is married; for then she displayeth and exerciseth all those ill humours, which before for her own ends she concealed; then she is puffed up, and imperious, and becomes intolerable to her own family, and to her relations and neighbours.

That is heir to her mistress; that possesseth her estate, either by the gift of her mistress, into whose favour she had insinuated herself by her cunning and officious carriage; or rather by the marriage of her master, which great and sudden change transports her beside herself, and makes her insufferably proud, and scornful, and injurious to all that converse with her.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For an odious woman, when she is married,.... Odious for her person, her ugliness, and the deformity of her body; or rather for the ill qualities of her mind, which, while single, she endeavours to conceal, but, being married, hides them no longer; but becomes imperious, proud, scornful, and malicious, and behaves in an ill natured way to her husband and all about her, to such a degree, that there is no bearing the place where she is;

and an handmaid, that is heir to her mistress; that has got so much into her affections that she leaves all she has to her when she dies, which makes her insufferably proud and vain; or she marries her master after the death of her mistress, and so coming into her place enjoys all she had, but only her wisdom and humility; which being wanting, she behaves in such a manner as to make the whole family uneasy. This might be exemplified in the case of Hagar, the bondmaid of Sarah, a type of those that are under the law of works, and seek the inheritance by it; and who trust in themselves that they are righteous, and despise others, Genesis 16:4.

Geneva Study Bible

For an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is {m} heir to her mistress.

(m) Who is married to her master after the death of her mistress.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

23. odious] Lit. hated, as in Deuteronomy 21:15; Isaiah 60:15. Her disposition is such as always to secure for her aversion and dislike.

when she is married] and so has both power and opportunity, which she lacked before, to display her true character, and cause misery. See Proverbs 21:9; Proverbs 21:19, Proverbs 27:15.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 23. - For an odious woman when she is married; or, under an unloved woman when she is married. The sentence does not refer to an unbeloved wife, a Leah, becoming the favourite, a Rachel; the expression, "when she is married," can hardly have this sense; but the gnome speaks of a woman who has passed much of her life without love, having nothing about her attractive either in looks, attainments, or manner, and is consequently soured and ill-tempered. If such a one does at last win a husband, she uses her new position to vex those who formerly depreciated her, and to make them as miserable as she cam And a handmaid that is heir to her mistress. The maidservant that obtains her mistress's property, either by supplanting her or by right of inheritance, is supposed to make a bad use of it, to become conceited, arrogant, and odious to all around her. The LXX. transposes the last two members of the comparison, placing the unloved woman in the fourth place as the most intolerable of all: "And if a maidservant should cast out (ἐκβάλη, Genesis 21:10) her own mistress, and a hateful woman should obtain a good husband." Proverbs 30:23

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

It is now not at all necessary to rack one's brains over the grounds or the reasons of the arrangement of the following proverb (vid., Hitzig). There are, up to this point, two numerical proverbs which begin with שׁתּים, Proverbs 30:7, and שׁתּי, Proverbs 30:15; after the cipher 2 there then, Proverbs 30:18, followed the cipher 3, which is now here continued:

21 Under three things doth the earth tremble,

     And under four can it not stand:

22 Under a servant when he becomes king,

     And a profligate when he has bread enough;

23 Under an unloved woman when she is married,

     And a maid-servant when she becomes heiress to her mistress.

We cannot say here that the 4 falls into 3 + 1; but the four consists of four ones standing beside one another. ארץ is here without pausal change, although the Athnach here, as at Proverbs 30:24, where the modification of sound occurs, divides the verse into two; מארץ, 14b (cf. Psalm 35:2), remains, on the other hand, correctly unchanged. The "earth" stands here, as frequently, instead of the inhabitants of the earth. It trembles when one of the four persons named above comes and gains free space for acting; it feels itself oppressed as by an insufferable burden (an expression similar to Amos 7:10); - the arrangement of society is shattered; an oppressive closeness of the air, as it were, settles over all minds. The first case is already designated, Proverbs 19:10, as improper: under a slave, when he comes to reign (quum rex fit); for suppose that such an one has reached the place of government, not by the murder of the king and by the robbery of the crown, but, as is possible in an elective monarchy, by means of the dominant party of the people, he will, as a rule, seek to indemnify himself in his present highness for his former lowliness, and in the measure of his rule show himself unable to rise above his servile habits, and to pass out of the limited circle of his earlier state. The second case is this: a נבל, one whose mind is perverted and whose conduct is profligate - in short, a low man (vid., Proverbs 17:17) - ישׂבּע־לחם (cf. Metheg-Setzung, 28), i.e., has enough to eat (cf. to the expression Proverbs 28:19; Jeremiah 44:17); for this undeserved living without care and without want makes him only so much the more arrogant, and troublesome, and dangerous. The שׂנוּאה, in the second case, is not thought of as a spouse, and that, as in supposed polygamy, Genesis 29:31; Deuteronomy 21:15-17, as fallen into disfavour, but who again comes to favour and honour (Dathe, Rosenmller); for she can be שׂנואה without her own fault, and as such she is yet no גּרוּשׁה; and it is not to be perceived why the re-assumption of such an one should shatter social order. Rightly Hitzig, and, after his example, Zckler: an unmarried lady, an old spinster, is meant, whom no one desired because she had nothing attractive, and was only repulsive (cf. Grimm, under Sir. 7:26b). If such an one, as כּי תבעל says, at length, however, finds her husband and enters into the married relation, then she carries her head so much the higher; for she gives vent to ill-humour, strengthened by long restraint, against her subordinates; then she richly requites her earlier and happily married companions for their depreciation of her, among whom she had to suffer, as able to find no one who would love her. In the last case it is asked whether כּי־תירשׁ is meant of inheriting as an heiress (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targ., Jerome, the Venet., and Luther), or supplanting (Euchel, Gesenius, Hitzig), i.e., an entering into the inheritance of the dead, or an entering into the place of a living mistress. Since ירשׁ, with the accus. of the person, Genesis 15:3-4, signifies to be the heir of one, and only with the accus. of peoples and lands signifies, "to take into possession (to seize) by supplanting," the former is to be preferred; the lxx (Syr.), ὅταν ἐκβάλῃ, appear to have read כּי־תגרשׁ. This גּרשׁ would certainly be, after Genesis 21:10, a piece of the world turned upside down; but also the entering, as heiress, into the inheritance, makes the maid-servant the reverse of that which she was before, and brings with it the danger that the heiress, notwithstanding her want of culture and dignity, demean herself also as heiress of the rank. Although the old Israelitish law knew only intestate succession to an inheritance, yet there also the case might arise, that where there were no natural or legal heirs, the bequest of a wife of rank passed over to her servants and nurses.