Twice Solomon uses a similar expression, "the strange woman (even) the stranger," to impress more forcibly on the young man the fact _that her person belongs to another._ The literal and spiritual adulteress are both meant. The spiritual gives to the world her person and her heart, which belong by right to God. In this sense the foreign women who subsequently drew aside Solomon himself, were "strange women," not so much in respect to their local distance from Israel, as in respect to being utterly _alien to the worship of God._ Lust and idolatry were the spiritual adultery into which they entrapped the once wise king. How striking that he should utter beforehand a warning which he himself afterwards disregarded.--_Fausset._ We are not to forget that the accomplished seducer has herself perhaps been seduced. The fair and flattering words, the endless arts of allurement, are on both sides.--_Wardlaw._ One who is as it were, a stranger to her own house and husband by faithlessness (Hitzig), and hence a type of anything that is false and seductive in doctrine or practice. . . . By God's goodness Solomon's words in this Divinely inspired book were an antidote to the poison of his own vicious example.--_Wordsworth._ Verse 17. False doctrine and false worship are in Scripture compared to harlotry and adultery. (Numb. xiv. 33; Judges ii. 17; viii. 33; Psa. cvi. 39; Rev. xvii. 1, 2; xviii. 3.)--_Wordsworth._ It is God that is the guide of her youth, whoever may be under Him; it is God's covenant that is made, whosoever may be the contractor in it. It is God who is first _forsaken,_ then _forgotten;_ forsaken in the beginning of wickedness, forgotten in the hardened practice of it. God hath appointed guides for youth--to stay the weakness of it, and to which, as unto God, youth ought to yield obedience. For elder years He hath appointed covenants as bonds and chains to hold them sure.--_Jermin._ There is no trusting them that will fail God and their near friends. If they fail God, they will fail men for their advantage. If they fail friends--much more strangers.--_Francis Taylor._ Verse 18. When you get into the company of the licentious, you are among the dead. They move about like men in outward appearance, but the best attributes of humanity have disappeared--the best affections of nature have been drained away from their hearts.--_Arnot._ Her house is not a building reared up, but inclined and bowed down, and she who dwelleth in it will, by her life, bring thee to the dead. . . . Death is here twice mentioned to show that it is a double death, a temporal death, and an eternal death, to which she bringeth men.--_Jermin._ Verse 19. Who would cast himself into a deep pit in the hopes of coming out alive, when almost all that fell into it were dashed in pieces.--_Lawson._ It is as hard to restore a lustful person to chastity as it is to restore a dead person to life.--_Chrysostom._