Proverbs 9:15

9:13-18 How diligent the tempter is, to seduce unwary souls into sin! Carnal, sensual pleasure, stupifies conscience, and puts out the sparks of conviction. This tempter has no solid reason to offer; and where she gets dominion in a soul, all knowledge of holy things is lost and forgotten. She is very violent and pressing. We need to seek and pray for true wisdom, for Satan has many ways to withdraw our souls from Christ. Not only worldly lusts and abandoned seducers prove fatal to the souls of men; but false teachers, with doctrines that flatter pride and give liberty to lusts, destroy thousands. They especially draw off such as have received only partial serious impressions. The depths of Satan are depths of hell; and sin, without remorse, is ruin, ruin without remedy. Solomon shows the hook; those that believe him, will not meddle with the bait. Behold the wretched, empty, unsatisfying, deceitful, and stolen pleasure sin proposes; and may our souls be so desirous of the everlasting enjoyment of Christ, that on earth we may live to him, daily, by faith, and ere long be with him in glory.

To call passengers who go right on their ways. Who have been religiously educated, and trained up in the principles of true Christianity; and who walk outwardly according to the rule of the divine word, and are in a fair way for heaven and eternal happiness. These she has her eye upon as they pass along, and calls unto them, and endeavours to turn them aside out of the way they are going, to make them proselytes to her antichristian religion; which, when she succeeds in, she glories and boasts of; just as harlots are very desirous of seducing and debauching chaste, innocent, and virtuous persons; see Revelation 2:20 . Saying as follows:

Contrast with Proverbs 9:1 , etc. The foolish woman has her house, but it is no stately palace with seven pillars, like the home of Wisdom. No train of maidens wait on her, and invite her guests, but she herself sits at the door, her position as prominent as that of Wisdom, counterfeiting her voice, making the same offer to the same class (compare Proverbs 9:16 with Proverbs 9:4 ).

Verse 15. - To call passengers who go right on their ways. With shameless effrontery she cries to all that pass by, she addresses her solicitations to persons who are going straight on their way, thinking nothing of her, having no idea of deviating from their pursued object. As they walk in the path of right and duty, she tries to turn them aside. Septuagint, "Calling to herself ( προσκαλουμένη ) those that pass by and are keeping straight in their ways." The Fathers find here a picture of the seductions of heretical teaching, which puts on the mask of orthodoxy and deceives the unwary. Wordsworth notes that, in the Apocalypse, the false teacher bears some emblems of the Lamb ( Revelation 13:11 ). All false doctrine retains some element of truth, and it is because of this admixture that it procures adherents and thrives for a time. Proverbs 9:15

The poet now brings before us another figure, for he personifies Folly working in opposition to Wisdom, and gives her a feminine name, as the contrast to Wisdom required, and thereby to indicate that the seduction, as the 13th proverbial discourse (chap. 7) has shown, appears especially in the form of degraded womanhood: 13 The woman Folly [Frau Thorheit] conducts herself boisterously, Wantonness, and not knowing anything at all; 14 And hath seated herself at the door of her house, On a seat high up in the city, 15 To call to those who walk in the way, Who go straight on their path. The connection of אשת כּסילוּת is genitival, and the genitive is not, as in אשׁת רע, Proverbs 6:24, specifying, but appositional, as in בת־ציון (vid., under Isaiah 1:8). הומיּה [boisterous] is pred., as Proverbs 7:11 : her object is sensual, and therefore her appearance excites passionately, overcoming the resistance of the mind by boisterousness. In 13b it is further said who and how she is. פּתיּוּת she is called as wantonness personified. This abstract פּתיּוּת, derived from פּתי, must be vocalized as אכזריּוּת; Hitzig thinks it is written with a on account of the following u sound, but this formation always ends in ijjûth, not ajjûth.

But as from חזה as well חזּיון equals חזיון as חזון is formed, so from פּתה as well פּתוּת like חזוּת or פּתוּת like לזוּת, רעוּת, as פּתיוּת (instead of which פּתיּוּת is preferred) can be formed; Kimchi rightly (Michlol 181a) presents the word under the form פּעלוּת. With וּבל (Proverbs 14:7) poetic, and stronger than לאו, the designation of the subject is continued; the words וּבל־ידעה מּה (thus with Mercha and without Makkeph following, ידעה is to be written, after Codd. and old editions) have the value of an adjective: and not knowing anything at all (מה equals τὶ, as Numbers 23:3; Job 13:13, and here in the negative clause, as in prose מאוּמה), i.e., devoid of all knowledge. The Targ. translates explanatorily: not recognising טבתּא, the good; and the lxx substitutes: she knows not shame, which, according to Hitzig, supposes the word כּלמּה, approved of by him; but כלמה means always pudefactio, not pudor. To know no כלמה would be equivalent to, to let no shaming from without influence one; for shamelessness the poet would have made use of the expression ובל־ידעה בּשׁת. In וישׁבה the declaration regarding the subject beginning with הומיה is continued: Folly also has a house in which works of folly are carried one, and has set herself down by the door (לפּתח as לפי, Proverbs 8:3) of this house; she sits there על־כּסּא.