Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.
The verse belongs to the reproofs of instruction in the first seven chapters of Proverbs that plead to choose the path of wisdom, which is the path of life. The wisdom it urges shows that righteousness by faith includes wisdom by faith, making faith-based wisdom a fundamental principle of true education. The strange woman in the verse is a married adulteress, where the guide of her youth is the husband of her youth and the covenant of her God is the solemn marriage covenant.
That marriage covenant was preceded by betrothal and accompanied by ceremony, including the passing of the bride from her father's house to the house of her husband or his father, with feasts held, friends present, pledges given, and covenants ratified. She works through sensuous enticement and an entrancing voice while hidden behind attractive, deceptive exteriors, offering many inviting by-ways of crime, sin, and death. Cultivating unclean thoughts soon passes from adultery in the mind to actual fornication, and her by-ways lead careless feet quickly from innocence to infamy toward destruction.
Her course tends to death, hell, and despair and dims hope of future life to well-nigh hopeless, so that none who go to her return again to take hold of the paths of life. Breaking the great spiritual laws of being in this way produces spiritual disease and death, and disbelieving this and refusing to hearken leaves a broken and wasted life, with manhood lost and hands stained with crime. Even in that hell of sin and despair, God is present to save when the fallen soul cries out for what must be done to be saved. The warning in the surrounding passage about forsaking the guide of youth and forgetting God's covenant applies to the dangers young people face entering adolescence, showing the need for wise instruction and protection from sinful knowledge and conduct and helping children understand their physical development and preserve their moral lives.
The verse belongs to the reproofs of instruction in the first seven chapters of Proverbs that plead to choose the path of wisdom, which is the path of life. The wisdom it urges shows that righteousness by faith includes wisdom by faith, making faith-based wisdom a fundamental principle of true education. The strange woman in the verse is a married adulteress, where the guide of her youth is the husband of her youth and the covenant of her God is the solemn marriage covenant.
That marriage covenant was preceded by betrothal and accompanied by ceremony, including the passing of the bride from her father's house to the house of her husband or his father, with feasts held, friends present, pledges given, and covenants ratified. She works through sensuous enticement and an entrancing voice while hidden behind attractive, deceptive exteriors, offering many inviting by-ways of crime, sin, and death. Cultivating unclean thoughts soon passes from adultery in the mind to actual fornication, and her by-ways lead careless feet quickly from innocence to infamy toward destruction.
Her course tends to death, hell, and despair and dims hope of future life to well-nigh hopeless, so that none who go to her return again to take hold of the paths of life. Breaking the great spiritual laws of being in this way produces spiritual disease and death, and disbelieving this and refusing to hearken leaves a broken and wasted life, with manhood lost and hands stained with crime. Even in that hell of sin and despair, God is present to save when the fallen soul cries out for what must be done to be saved. The warning in the surrounding passage about forsaking the guide of youth and forgetting God's covenant applies to the dangers young people face entering adolescence, showing the need for wise instruction and protection from sinful knowledge and conduct and helping children understand their physical development and preserve their moral lives.