Proverbs 21:19 commentary;

19 ¶ It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.

We’ve had this thought presented to us before in;

Proverbs 21:9 It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.

There isn’t a man alive who has been married for any length of time who can’t tell a young man starting out in life that being married to woman with a sweet and kind spirit is far better than being married to what was once called in our language, a shrew.

Any young man who is attracted to a girl who is perpetually angry and always itching for a fight, while he might think that’s cute now, would be a stone cold fool to choose her for a mate and to be the mother of his children.

In the Bible, a wilderness is a desert place where there is very little that is useful to man. John Gill, the 18th century Calvinist Baptist commentator, points out that this verse could also have an application that it would be better to be with the church in the wilderness than with a harlot like the church of Rome, angry and lusting for gold and blood.

Christians are called to come out of this world system as some commentators use this verse to mean separating yourself from the world system before it is destroyed.

Revelation 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

You do realize, of course, that the world system on which you depend is about to be destroyed, annihilated? As a Christian you were not to serve that system in any event. Jesus said this about the economic system, giving it a personalized Syriac name. Mammon is the economic system and wordly wealth personified.

Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

We serve mammon with our energies, our indebtedness, working to pay back debts at criminally high interest rates with money that is taxed many times by many different government entities, including the tax of inflation where money is printed and printed until its worth is less and less. This too is a type of taxation. As more and more of our efforts must go into earning more money to survive the demagogues will blame the poor, the elderly, and the sick for being a drain and the kool aid drinkers will all shout Amen. But government policies and corporate greed continuingly support globalism, to lower the standard of living our fathers built, raising the standard in other places, until we are all at some kind of mean that is easier for the global elite to control and manipulate.

The system that you and I are a part of where we are addicted to cheap, foreign made products that are still overpriced because we don’t need them and only want them because of the mind manipulation of advertising, the cheap food, and mindless entertainments is in the way of your relationship with the risen Saviour. Remembering that Satan operates this world as the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4) should keep you thinking skeptically about everything from smarmy billboards to jingoistic, patriotic symbolism.

Each hour you listen to profane country music or rock or rap is an hour you are hearing from Satan’s mouth and not from God’s. Each minute that you are watching television or movies is a minute away from God’s blessings in His word. Each second that you choose to spend enriching the men and women of the global money elite is a second less you’ll spend in fellowship with Christ.

The world system is a contentious and angry woman, a harsh mistress, and a vicious paramour. You would be better off dwelling in a wilderness which has little to commend itself to you in the way of comforts and pleasures than to stay with her.

One of the biggest problems Christians have besides pride and self-righteousness is the innate willingness to kiss the hand of the human master that’s stealing us blind and whipping us bloody. As long as we get our little comforts and petty satisfactions we are happy to bow our shoulder under their yoke. And yet, we have little to offer a Saviour who has redeemed us out of all this and when ten million years have passed with you living in eternity with Him the cheap, plastic Chinese garbage you have filled your house with and the trip you took to the beach last summer on credit will have vanished from view.

Better we separate ourselves now from this contentious and angry woman and live in the wilderness than to continue bowing and scraping before her hoping to appease her wrath and like an abused pet whimpering and kowtowing hoping for a crumb or a kind word.