Proverbs 7:5

That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Proverbs 7:5. That they may keep thee from the strange woman — One reason why Solomon so often cautions his disciple in this manner, and inculcates upon him the important duty of shunning all acquaintance with lewd women, probably was because he observed those vices to abound more than they had formerly done in his time, in which peace and prosperity had made way for luxury and uncleanness.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:1-5 We must lay up God's commandments safely. Not only, Keep them, and you shall live; but, Keep them as those that cannot live without them. Those that blame strict and careful walking as needless and too precise, consider not that the law is to be kept as the apple of the eye; indeed the law in the heart is the eye of the soul. Let the word of God dwell in us, and so be written where it will be always at hand to be read. Thus we shall be kept from the fatal effects of our own passions, and the snares of Satan. Let God's word confirm our dread of sin, and resolutions against it.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The harlot adulteress of an Eastern city is contrasted with the true feminine ideal of the Wisdom who is to be the "sister" and "kinswoman" Proverbs 7:4 of the young man as he goes on his way through life. See Proverbs 8 in the introduction.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

5. The design of the teaching (compare Pr 2:16; 6:24).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

This privilege Solomon doth so oft inculcate, either because he found in himself the great power and besotting nature of lustful inclinations: or because he observed these vices to abound more in his time, in which peace and prosperity made way for luxury and uncleanness.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

That they may keep thee from the strange woman,.... Nothing has a greater tendency than Christ and his Gospel, and an intimate acquaintance with them, and a retention of them, to keep from all sin, from all fleshly lusts, from the sin of uncleanness; and also from all the errors, heresies, idolatry, superstition, and will worship, of the whore of Rome; a stranger to God and true godliness, to Christ and his truths, the Spirit and his operations;

from the stranger which flattereth with her words; See Gill on Proverbs 2:16; see Gill on Proverbs 5:3, and see Gill on Proverbs 6:24.

Geneva Study Bible

That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. strange woman … stranger] See Proverbs 2:16, note.

flattereth with] “Heb. maketh smooth her words,” R.V. marg.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 5. - That they may keep thee from the strange woman (see on Proverbs 2:16 and Proverbs 6:24). When the heart is filled with the love of what is good, it is armed against the seductions of evil pleasure or whatever may entice the soul from God and duty. Septuagint, "That she (Wisdom) may keep thee from the strange and evil woman, if she should assail thee with gracious words." Proverbs 7:5

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The subject-matter of this earnest warning are the admonitions of the teacher of wisdom, and through him of Wisdom herself, who in contrast to the world and its lust is the worthiest object of love, and deserves to be loved with the purest, sincerest love:

4 Say to wisdom: "Thou art my sister!"

   And call understanding "Friend;"

5 That they may keep thee from the strange woman,

   From the stranger who useth smooth words.

The childlike, sisterly, and friendly relationship serves also to picture forth and designate the intimate confidential relationship to natures and things which are not flesh and blood. If in Arabic the poor is called the brother of poverty, the trustworthy the brother of trustworthiness, and abu, um (אם), achu, ucht, are used in manifold ways as the expression for the interchangeable relation between two ideas; so (as also, notwithstanding Ewald, 273b, in many Hebr. proper names) that has there become national, which here, as at Job 17:14; Job 30:29, mediated by the connection of the thoughts, only first appears as a poetic venture. The figurative words of Proverbs 7:4 not merely lead us to think of wisdom as a personal existence of a higher order, but by this representation it is itself brought so near, that אם easily substitutes itself, Proverbs 2:3, in the place of אם. אחתי of Solomon's address to the bride brought home is in its connection compared with Book of Wisdom 8:2. While the ôth of אחות by no means arises from abstr. ûth, but achôth is derived from achajath, מודע (as Ruth 2:1, cf. מודעת, Proverbs 3:2), here by Mugrash מודע, properly means acquaintance, and then the person known, but not in the superficial sense in which this word and the Arab. ma'arfat are used (e.g., in the Arabic phrase quoted by Fleischer, kanna aṣḥaab ṣarna m'aaraf - nous tions amis, nous en sommes plus que de simples connaissances), but in the sense of familiar, confidential alliance. The infin. לשׁמרך does not need for its explanation some intermediate thought to be introduced: quod eo conducet tibi ut (Mich.), but connects itself immediately as the purpose: bind wisdom to thyself and thyself to wisdom thus closely that thou mayest therewith guard thyself. As for the rest, vid., Proverbs 2:16; this verse repeats itself here with the variation of one word.