To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words;
To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words - (like Proverbs 2:12, which has the same formula.) "To deliver thee:" this verse depends on Proverbs 2:11, "Discretion ... understanding shall keep thee," so as "to deliver thee from the strange woman." 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, and so to deter him from connection with her (cf. Proverbs 2:17; Proverbs 5:20). The literal and the spiritual adulteress and temptress 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 their 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 afterward himself disregarded! (Nehemiah 13:26, "Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? yet among many nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him king over all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin;" 1 Kings 11:1-4.)