To deliver thee from the strange woman, from the stranger who flattereth with her words;
Chapter 2 promises that wisdom in the heart puts discretion on guard. Verse 16 names the second danger: a stranger whose weapon is not force but smooth talk. Older translations call her "the strange woman," and the writers quoted here use that name. Commentators read the warning on two levels — a real moral danger to a young man, and a picture of a religious system that flatters instead of telling the truth.
The same wisdom that keeps a person from violent men keeps him from a very different danger. One writer looks at what drives her.
But the discretion that flows from wisdom guards just as well from "the strange woman" (v. 16) and her flattering words. With her, lust reigns, not love. Selfish passion rules, not true affection and tender regard. Debauchery is all you can expect from a woman who forsakes the guide of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God.
Read at face value, the verse describes a woman who talks her way to what she wants. The next verses trace where that leads.
Verse 16 then warns against the seductions of an immoral woman. She uses flattery to gain her own ends. Here she proves unfaithful to her first husband (v. 17), and she will seduce any man who is willing. But where does her house and her paths lead? The end of such things is death.
One writer traces the word "stranger" back to the making of woman.
That she was a "stranger" who sought familiarity is enough for any soul with the fear of God. Man is made in such a way that this should always signal danger. When woman was first made, there was no strangeness. She came out of the man, to be his wife, his counterpart. The danger is far greater now. In a fallen condition, "the strange woman" abandons the propriety of her sex. She appeals with flattering words to the vanity, the pride, or the lusts of man!
Verse 17 explains where the flattery of verse 16 comes from. One writer counts up the marks of her character.
In this first description of her, flattery, foolishness and faithlessness are the marks she bears. A footnote suggests that the word translated "guide" can also be translated "familiar friend." … Her character shows three outstanding marks in this first reference to her. (1) A false representation: flattery marks her instead of truth. (2) Unfaithfulness to her Lord: she has forsaken her guide. (3) Astray from the truth: she has forgotten the covenant of her God. No one can hope to find the path of life in her company.
Flattery is treated elsewhere as a form of lying, not merely as excessive praise.
Accepting flattery is accepting falsehood, because flattery is deceit. It is not meant honestly, and it is not sober, real fact. Satan is highly skilled in such methods.
Chapter 2 sets out two kinds of evil. This verse introduces the second.
The discretion of wisdom preserves us from a second kind of evil: "the strange woman" (v. 16), the snares and attractions of corruption. These are the two forms of evil: wickedness, and even violence and wrong. That is, leaving the law and seeking to satisfy one's lusts by violence and corruption. … The ways of "the strange woman" are death. The language is stronger here than with the robbers before, or the wicked men just above. They are bad enough, but the way to "the strange woman" is the way of death. It corrupts and destroys heart as well as conscience. True affections disappear and turn into lusts.
This woman keeps returning through the opening chapters. One writer sees more than an individual here.
Look carefully at all the places where this woman is described, and you will see that she is a fitting figure of what the New Testament calls "Mystery, Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes" (Rev. 17:5). In these first seven chapters of Proverbs we are called on five times to consider this woman. Evidently she is a great danger to the sons of wisdom, and we need to take great care in case we fall victim to her flatteries.
- Deliverance, not willpower. Wisdom in the heart produces discretion. Discretion is what guards you from this woman and her flattering words.
- Deliverance from flattery. Her power is speech. Flattery is deceit, not sober fact, so a stranger who seeks familiarity should sound the alarm.
- Deliverance from broken faith. She has forsaken the guide — the familiar friend — of her youth, and forgotten the covenant of her God. No one finds the path of life in her company.
- Deliverance from corruption. Chapter 2 names two evils: violence and corruption. This is the second, and it destroys heart as well as conscience.
- Deliverance from death. Her house and her paths end in death. Commentators also read her as a figure of Babylon, a system that flatters instead of telling the truth.
who forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God;
This chapter warns about a woman called a stranger, and the verse says what made her one: she walked out on two ties from her early life. Commentators read her both as a real danger to a young man and as a picture of a religious system that has left its first attachments.
The verse does not describe someone who never knew God. It describes desertion: both halves point back to what she was given at the start.
"The strange woman" left both the principles we have seen. The first is the fear of God, according to the way He had revealed Himself. The second is the care that had authority over her earliest thoughts, and through that gave her a place in holy affections and subjection. The book assumes that everyone here has had dealings with God in a known relationship and has grown up in His ways — inside the covenant of God's people.
Older translations render this "the guide of her youth," and the writers below quote it that way. The phrase points to the earliest steady influences over a life — home, parents, upbringing — and to the moment a young person moves out from under them.
The book takes the first influences to be the healthy ones of father and mother, and the fear of Jehovah. "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it," is its language. Every day we see the young growing up and moving out of the influences and shelter of the home of their youth. That is how the book looks at them here — and of the corrupt woman it says, "the guide of her youth."
Another writer gives a second way to translate the word, and names the One she left.
A footnote suggests that the word translated "guide" can also be translated "familiar friend." … She has forsaken the guide of her youth — her familiar friend. The true Christ of God has long been displaced among her people, whatever her profession may be. Instead of walking in the light of His counsel, she is walking in the sight of her own eyes.
Proverbs almost always says "the LORD" — Jehovah. Here the verse says "her God," using a different Hebrew word. That change is rare.
In Proverbs it is always "Jehovah"; only once is "Elohim" used (Prov. 25:2), and in Prov. 2:17, "Elohey-ha," her God.
One writer ties the book's usual name to the people it addresses.
We do not hear the glad news of grace in this book. There is no gospel call throughout. It speaks to people who are under the law and the covenant, though others may profit by it too. So in this book "Jehovah" appears again and again, while "Elohim" is rare and carries a special force where it does appear.
Her conduct grows straight out of her broken loyalties.
The discretion that flows from wisdom is just as effective to guard us from "the strange woman" and her flattering words. With her, lust reigns, not love. Selfish passion rules, not true affection and tender regard. Debauchery is all you could expect from a woman who forsakes the guide of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.
Another writer names where that road ends.
The ways of "the strange woman" are death. The language here is stronger than it was about robbers or wicked men before. They are bad enough, but the way to "the strange woman" is the way of death. It corrupts, and destroys the heart as well as the conscience. True affections disappear and turn into lusts. It is self in its lowest and most absolute form.
The picture also fits something larger than one young man's danger. Some writers take the woman as a portrait of a religious system.
Folly is the path that pleases the flesh, where a person gratifies and indulges the natural desires. It is the path of self-will and disobedience. The foolish woman is the personification of it. It is the corrupt religious system around us. In the past age it was corrupt Judaism; today it is corrupt Christianity. What Scripture says of the foolish woman is that she "forsakes the guide of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God" (Prov. 2:17). It is not hard to recognise her today with such a clear description.
One writer names where that decline starts.
The first thing said of the professing church is that it has fallen. It had left its first love. It had become less eager to follow the Guide of its youth.
- Forsakes. She is not a stranger to God by birth. She is a stranger by desertion: she grew up in a known relationship with God, inside His covenant.
- Guide. The one she left had authority over her earliest thoughts. The same word can also mean a familiar friend.
- Covenant. Proverbs says "Jehovah" again and again. The rare "her God" here stands out, and that rarity carries weight.
- Consequence. Once those ties go, lust reigns instead of love, and that road ends in death.
- Warning. The same decline shows up in religion: first love left, the Guide of its youth followed with less eagerness, and the true Christ displaced.
-- for her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead;
Wisdom has just promised to rescue a young man from the smooth-talking stranger. Now it tells him where her house leads: the verse answers the question temptation never asks — not "is it pleasant?" but "where does this road end?"
Verse 18 sits inside a chapter about being kept safe. Wisdom taken into the heart guards a person from two kinds of ruin. This verse names the second.
Proverbs 2 shows us what comes of a heart that submits to the words of wisdom and searches hard for it. The result is the knowledge of the fear of Jehovah, and the knowledge of God Himself. Whoever gives himself to this will be kept. He will have no part with the wicked man, and he will also be delivered from the deceitful woman — from corruption.
Older translations call her the "strange" woman, and the word is precise. It marks someone standing outside the relationship God Himself formed.
"Strange" is a word much used and important. All gods that are not Jehovah are strange gods; fire not from the altar was strange fire. It means what does not belong to us, what is not within the God-given relationship we are in… God made them male and female, "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." That was the closest possible relationship, as belonging to him, and the expression of it was right. This was mere corrupt lust; the woman, a stranger to that divinely formed relationship. It spent the nature and the heart, and ended in death.
The picture is a building on a slope. Her house and her paths end in the same place. God hates this sin because it breaks a relationship He made holy, and history has proved that more than once.
Corruption is as hateful to God as it is destructive to man. That is clearest when it takes the form of violating a holy relationship… So here it says that "her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed." Israel as a people had to prove this before the Christian world existed to follow the same deadly course. It is just as true of each person.
There is a painful irony here. The wise king wrote these lines and then did not take his own warning. Commentators differ on how wide the word "strange" reaches: some read these warnings as aimed at Solomon and at the women of other nations.
Of special interest are the repeated warnings against the "strange woman." The strange women the Spirit of God warned him about in his youth are the women of other nations, Gentiles… The Spirit of the Lord saw ahead to the sad end of the great and wise king. So He warned him against the strange woman, pictured as the prostitute who traps people and whose ways end in death. But he did not heed the heavenly wisdom that had instructed and warned him.
Some writers press the image further. They see in this woman a picture that returns at the end of the Bible, where a whole religious system does the seducing.
A woman like this is the special symbol of false religion, as Revelation 17:4-6 shows. The woman Babylon the great is "the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth." People are often deceived by their lust for pleasure; and religions that offer such enticements carry people away into evil that can engulf them in eternal remorse.
Three marks give her away: "flattery, foolishness and faithlessness are the marks she bears," writes George Davison.
Death is not the last word of the chapter. The same wisdom that names the sinking house also names the road that climbs.
Wisdom from Jehovah is what gives a person the good sense to walk in the way of the good and to keep the paths of the righteous. So the faithful of old were led. But how much brighter is the light of life when we follow Him! God has made His ways and words on earth known to us as He has of no one else.
- Kept — this chapter is about rescue. Wisdom taken into the heart keeps a person clear of both violence and corruption.
- Stranger — "strange" means outside the relationship God formed. The sin is crossing a line He drew.
- House — the house itself sinks down to death, so the danger is built in, not occasional. Israel proved it, and the same figure returns at the end of the Bible as Babylon, false religion.
- Solomon — the man who wrote the warning ignored it and fell; wisdom on the page saves nobody who will not heed it.
- Two roads — one house sinks to death; the other road is the way of the good. The faithful of old walked it, and its light is far brighter now.
none that go unto her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life
This verse explains why wisdom's warning is so urgent. The road it describes runs one way only, so the real question is how anyone stays off it in the first place.
Wisdom here is more than something you know. Once it enters the heart it becomes a guard, and it guards against two things.
When wisdom enters the heart, it shapes the spirit and mind. It forms our desires after itself, so that a person lives in what is good and finds this divine knowledge pleasant to the soul. Wisdom then becomes a discretion that keeps us from the evil around us and from the traps laid for us. It keeps watch over us. What it keeps us from here is twofold: the wickedness of men, and corruption.
The second danger comes as a person. She works by words, and what drives her is not love.
The discretion that flows from wisdom guards just as well against "the strange woman" and her flattering words. With her, lust rules, not love; selfish passion rules, not true affection and tender care. You can expect nothing but debauchery from a woman who abandons the guide of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.
Older translations end the verse with "attain to the paths of life" — this road never reaches life at all. One writer traces that ruin through a whole nation and down to a single person.
Corruption is as hateful to God as it is destructive to man, above all when it breaks a holy relationship. See how Revelation speaks of Babylon and her counterpart, and how God deals with them. So here we are told that her house leans down to death, and her path to the dead. Israel as a people had to prove this before Christendom ever existed, and Christendom then followed the same fatal path. It is just as true of one person.
If there is no return, the practical counsel is not about escaping later but about refusing at the start.
The evil is so captivating that verse 19 tells us, "none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life." Warned like this, we should refuse the very first pull toward such temptation. How much better to "walk in the ways of goodness and keep to the paths of righteousness."
This woman keeps coming back in the opening chapters. Some writers see a larger figure behind her.
We turn back first of all to consider the record of the "strange woman" who is mentioned more than once in the first seven chapters of this book. A careful look at all the places where this woman is described will show that she is a fitting figure of what we know in New Testament language as "Mystery, great Babylon, the mother of harlots" (Revelation 17:5). In these first seven chapters of Proverbs we are called five times to consider this woman. She seems to be a great danger to the sons of wisdom, and we need to take great care in case we fall victim to her flattery.
This first mention of her already gives her a character. It begins with what she says.
This first reference to her gives three outstanding marks of her character. (1) False representation: flattery marks her instead of truth. (2) Unfaithfulness to her Lord: she has forsaken her guide. (3) Astray from the truth: she has forgotten the covenant of her God. No one can hope to find the path of life in her company.
Kelly meets the same snare later in Proverbs. He does not soften the danger, but he does name the only rescue.
The snare of a prostitute is truly dangerous. She has lost all shame, and her schemes are subtle and varied. She "is a deep ditch," like "a strange woman in a narrow pit," and only God's mercy and power can lift anyone out of it.
- Guarded — Wisdom that enters the heart becomes discretion. It guards against the wickedness of men and against corruption.
- Flattered — Her first move is not force but false words. Flattery, unfaithfulness and a forgotten covenant are her three marks.
- Captured — What starts as attraction ends at a house that leans toward death. Israel proved it, Christendom followed, and one person can prove it too.
- Refused — Since none come back, the moment that counts is the first pull. Walk in goodness rather than plan an escape later.
- Rescued — The pit is deep and narrow, and anyone who does come out comes out only by God's mercy and power.