Proverbs 2 · a question people ask
Who is "the strange woman" (2:16)?
The chapter describes her by her words and her ways. She is "the strange woman, even … the foreigner who flatters with her words" (2:16), "who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God" (2:17), and "her house leads down to death" (2:18). In Hebrew strange is zarah and foreigner is nokhriyyah (tap strange, foreigner). The chapter calls her a foreigner and also speaks of "the covenant of her God" (2:17); it doesn't say how the two fit, or who "the friend of her youth" is. In Jeremiah the LORD asks his people, "Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth’" (Jeremiah 3:4), with the Hebrew words of the friend of her youth and another ending; and Malachi speaks of "the wife of your youth" and "the wife of your covenant" (Malachi 2:14). The chapter doesn't point to either, and these notes don't choose. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 come back to this subject at length, and 7:5 repeats 2:16 almost word for word; chapter 2 says only these four verses (2:16-19).
The verses
“to deliver you from the strange woman, even from the foreigner who flatters with her words, who forsakes the friend of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God; for her house leads down to death, her paths to the departed spirits. None who go to her return again, neither do they attain to the paths of life.”
“that they may keep you from the strange woman, from the foreigner who flatters with her words.”
“Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth!’?”
“Yet you say, ‘Why?’ Because the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and the wife of your covenant.”