Hear me now therefore, O ye sons,
And depart not from the words of my mouth.
Remove thy way far from her,
And come not nigh the door of her house:
Lest thou give thine honour unto others,
And thy years unto the cruel:
Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth;
And thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
And thou mourn at the last,
When thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
And say, How have I hated instruction,
And my heart despised reproof;
And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
Nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
I was almost in all evil
In the midst of the congregation and assembly.
To learn by painful experience, if the Word of God is not bowed to, is a bitter and solemn thing. God is not mocked; what is sown must be reaped.
The unsteady hand, the confused brain, the bleared eye, premature age and weakened powers; with days and nights of folly to look back on with regret that can never be banished from the memory: such are a few of the results of failing to heed the advice of wisdom in the natural world. And in the spiritual we have what answer to all these–inability to try the things that differ, weakened spiritual susceptibilities, unsteadiness of behavior, loss in time and loss at the judgment seat of Christ; such are some of the sad effects of refusing the path of separation from apostate religion in this day of Christ’s rejection.
Throughout this collection of Proverbs, the strange woman is looked upon as an intruder from the outside, not a daughter of Israel who has been betrayed from the path of virtue.
The law declared there was to be no harlot among the women of the chosen people.
It was from the surrounding countries the temptresses entered to seduce the young man of the separated nation. Hence the “strange woman”: not “strange” in the sense of peculiar; but the stranger – woman who plied her meretricious art to deceive those who should be holy to the Lord. But so low had become the moral state of Israel, that even the daughters of the people of God had fallen into the degradation of the hidden, as is evident from the words already noticed in chapter 2:17. Though called a “stranger” or “foreigner,” she had “forsaken the guide of her youth and forgotten the covenant of her God.” Hence, she’s viewed as an outsider, having no place in the congregation of the Lord.
Sanctified, wedded love, in contrast to the loose and godless ways of what has been presented, we now have brought before us.
(Commentary by H.A. Ironside)