Proverbs 17:14 (BSB)

To start a quarrel is to release a flood; so abandon the dispute before it breaks out.

From Proverbs 17. Also in the ESV.

Commentary on Proverbs 17:14

• Matthew Henry (Presbyterian), Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Proverbs 17:14: Here is, 1. The danger that there is in the beginning of strife. One hot word, one peevish reflection, one angry demand, one spiteful contradiction, begets another, and that a third, and so on, till it proves like the cutting of a dam; when the water has got a little passage it does itself widen the breach, bears down all before it, and there is...
• John Gill (Reformed Baptist), Exposition of the Old and New Testaments on Proverbs 17:14: The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water,.... As when a man makes a little hole in the bank of a river, or cuts a small passage in it, to let the water into an adjoining field; by the force of the water, the passage is widened, and it flows in, in great abundance, to the overflow and prejudice of the field...
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (Reformed), Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible on Proverbs 17:14: letteth . . . water--as a breach in a dam. before . . . meddled with--before strife has become sharp, or, by an explanation better suiting the figure, before it rolls on, or increases.
• Keil & Delitzsch (Lutheran), Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament on Proverbs 17:14: Pro 17:14 14 As one letteth out water is the beginning of a strife; But cease thou from such strife ere it comes to showing teeth. The meaning of this verb פּטר is certain: it means to break forth; and transitively, like Arab. faṭr, to bring forth from a cleft, to make to break forth, to let go free (Theodotion, ἀπολύων; Jerome, dimittit; Venet. ἀφιείς).