What Does Proverbs 2:16 Mean?

(16) **To deliver thee from the strange woman.—**Another work of wisdom, to save from profligacy. Of the two epithets here used, *“*strange” (*zārah*) and “stranger” (*nokhrîyyah*)*, *the first implies that she belonged to another family, the second to another nation. It would seem as if the evil example of Solomon (1Kings 11:1), in marrying foreign women, had become common in Israel, and that they, by their vicious lives, had become a deadly source of corruption. Brought up in the lax views of morality which prevailed among heathen nations at this time, they would not consider themselves bound by the high standard of purity which was enjoined upon Hebrew women by the Law. (16-19) Besides the literal sense of this passage, as given above, commentators have very generally found in it a spiritual meaning, a warning against idolatry and apostasy. The union of Israel to God is so frequently spoken of in the prophets under the figure of a marriage, and their rejection of Him for idols as adultery, that the passage may well bear this further sense, especially as Jeremiah (Jeremiah 3:4) has borrowed this very phrase, “guide of her youth,” for a passage in which he is reproving the Jews for their faithlessness. The figure is also very common in the New Testament, as descriptive of the union of Christ and the Church.