Proverbs 22:14 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The mouth of strange women is a deep pit— Maundrell, describing the passage out of the jurisdiction of the Basha of Aleppo into that of the Basha of Tripoli, tells us, that the road was rocky and uneven, but attended with variety. "Sometimes it led us under the cool shade of thick trees; sometimes through narrow valleys, watered with fresh murmuring torrents; and then for a good while together upon the brink of a precipice. And in all places it treated us with the prospect of plants and flowers of divers kinds, as myrtles, oleanders, cyclamens, &c. Having spent about two hours in this manner, we descended into a low valley; at the bottom of which is a fissure into the earth, of a great depth, but withal so narrow that it is not discernible to the eye, "till you arrive just upon it, though to the ear a notice of it is given at a great distance, by reason of the noise of a stream running down into it from the hills. We could not guess it to be less than thirty yards deep; but it is so narrow that a small arch, not four yards over, lands you on its other side. They call it the Sheik's Wife; a name given it from a woman of that quality, who fell into it, and, I need not add, perished." Now may not Solomon refer to some such dangerous place as this, in the present verse, The mouth of a strange woman is a deep pit, &c. and chap. Proverbs 23:27. A whore is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit? The flowery pleasures of the place where this fatal pit was, make the allusion still more striking. How agreeable to sense the path which led to this chamber of death! See Observations, p. 219.