The image would hardly occur to us, who never go barefoot, and are never or rarely exposed to any liability of _treading_ upon burning coals. If we decided to expose the same sentiment by a similar image, we should say, "Can one _handle_ hot coals and not be burned?" But in the East travelling parties kindle fires in the open air for cooking and for warmth, and a passenger might easily burn his naked foot by treading inadvertently upon the hot but not glowing place of one of their recently quitted fires.--_Kitto._ _OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS._ Verse 24. Bound and kept in the heart as a friend, that law will prevail to keep the youth "from the strange woman." Observing a great swelling wave rolling forward to devour him, this faithful teacher imparts to the young voyager on life's troubled sea a principle which will bear him buoyant over it. A slender vessel floats alone upon the ocean, contending with the storm. A huge wave approaches, towering high above her hull. All depends upon how the ship shall take it. If she go under it she will never rise again: if she is so trimmed that her bows rise with the first approaches, she springs lightly over it, and gets no harm. The threatening billow passes beneath her, and breaks with a growl behind her, but the ship is safe. The law and love of the Lord, taught by his mother in childhood, and maintaining its place yet as the friend of his bosom and the ruler of his conscience, will give the youth a spring upward proportionate to the magnitude of the temptation coming on.--_Arnot._ That which is said of Jael is true of the strange woman. She brought forth soft words, but a hard nail; in her mouth was a gentle hammer, but in her hand a heavy one. Open force is more easily resisted, but that which is hid in the beginning with fair words in the end stingeth most cruelly.--_Jermin._ "_Flattery._" That constitutes the risk. If impenitence would tell the truth, or even if we would allow the truth, there would be no danger. But hers is an alien tongue in this,--that though we deliberately admit it is a cheat, we accept its flattery.--_Miller._ Verse 26. A famine of bread followeth the gluttony of lust, and it is life itself that is destroyed by it. He that is thus brought to a morsel of bread on earth, shall be brought to a drop of water in hell, if repentance do not in time beg a gracious pardon for him. That man's life is precious, the devil himself affirmeth, who seeketh to make it vile; he saith, who laboureth to destroy it, that "Skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for his life" (Job ii. 4). How unworthy valuers are they therefore of their own lives who esteem them less than the devil does, and who makes them a prey to the adulteress, who as a lion hunteth after them.--_Jermin._