This verse begins the poem's second deliverance, Proverbs 2:16–19.
The second deliverance: from the seductress, and like the perverse man, her weapon is named first, flattering words. In chapters 1 through 9, the mouth is always the trap's trigger.
The father's lecture on searching for wisdom is one long sentence, a 22-verse poem built like an arch. It rises on conditions: if you receive my words, if you incline your ear, if you cry out, if you seek her as silver and search as for hidden treasure (vv. 1–4). It reaches its keystone twice: then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God (v. 5), then you will understand righteousness, justice, equity, every good path (v. 9). And between the two thens sits the verse that keeps the whole structure from becoming a wage agreement: for the LORD gives wisdom (v. 6). The seeking is real and strenuous, mining vocabulary, digging and crying out, and what the seeker finds at the bottom of the mine is not a wage but a Giver, handing over freely what no digging could manufacture. Seek like it depends on the search; receive like the gift it was all along. That is the poem's deep architecture, and the second half shows what the gift does once it arrives: wisdom entering the heart posts two guards, discretion and understanding (vv. 10–11), who deliver the young man from the two great predators of chapters 1 through 9, the perverse man who loves crooked paths (vv. 12–15) and the seductress who has abandoned covenant (vv. 16–19). The poem ends where Israel's hopes always end, in the land: the upright dwell and remain; the wicked are cut off and uprooted (vv. 20–22). Because the chapter is one sentence, no verse in it stands alone, and every member entry below reads its verse as one stone in this arch.
This verse contributes the poem's second predator, and the parallel construction is deliberate teaching: "to deliver you from" the evil man (v. 12), "to deliver you from" the immoral woman, two dangers, one grammar, one defense. Both seduce by speech; her flattery and his perverse talk are the same weapon in different registers, which is why the same resident wisdom guards against both. This is the book's first mention of the figure who will dominate chapters 5 through 7, and the entries there carry the full treatment; here the poem needs only her method. Flattery works by telling a man a delicious falsehood about himself, and the son whose worth is already settled at home, in wisdom's house, is the hardest man in town to flatter.
Related: Proverbs 5:3 · Proverbs 7:21 · Proverbs 22:14
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.