<p>The letter Nun delivers a proverb about the domestic nightmare the Alphabet of Ben Sira seems to fear most — not infidelity, not poverty, but a wife who won't stop talking:</p>
<p>"Shake yourself off from a wife who is bad and rules over you with her tongue, because a bad wife is like crazy dogs, and doors close to her while she has much in her mouth to answer."</p>
<p>The imagery is deliberately extreme. Like crazy dogs. It's the kind of comparison that signals we're in the territory of folk humor and exaggeration, not sober legal advice. The Alphabet, composed between 700 and 1000 CE, is famous for pushing boundaries, and proverbs like this are part of why scholars have long debated whether the text is genuine wisdom literature or an elaborate parody of it.</p>
<p>The phrase "doors close to her" paints a vivid social picture: neighbors shutting their doors when they hear her coming, the community withdrawing from someone whose speech has become unbearable. And yet she still has "much in her mouth to answer" — she's never at a loss for words, never deterred by the closed doors. The proverb is describing someone whose verbal dominance has become a kind of isolation, cutting her off from community while she remains oblivious to the damage.</p>
<p>The Talmud (Yevamot 63b) contains its own pointed sayings about difficult spouses, and the book of Proverbs returns to the theme repeatedly — (Proverbs 21:9): "Better to live on the corner of a roof than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife." Ben Sira isn't inventing the theme. He's turning the volume all the way up.</p>