My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, [if] thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger,
Ver. 1. My son, if thou be surety.] The wise man, having exhorted his son to marry, rather than burn, and to nourish a family, rather than to haunt harlots' houses, to the end that he may show himself a good economic, and provide for the comfortable subsistence of wife and children, he bids him here beware - (1.) Of unadvised suretyship; (2.) Of idleness, two great enemies to thrift, without which there can be no good house kept. The royalty of Solomon could not have consisted, for all his riches, without forecast and frugality.