This verse sits inside the saying about the harlot's ambush, Proverbs 23:26–28.
Quick answer
Two images of the same trap: a deep pit and a narrow well, easy to fall into, brutally hard to climb out of. The verse describes what the entanglement is like from the inside, after the falling.
Read the whole unit
The father has asked for the heart (v. 26); now he shows the ground ahead. Verse 28 will add that the trap is not passive: she hunts.
Read the whole unit
A three-verse saying that begins with the tenderest sentence in the Thirty Sayings, "My son, give me your heart," and then shows why the father wants it: there is an ambush ahead. The harlot is a deep pit, the seductress a narrow well, and she lies in wait like a robber, multiplying the unfaithful. The order matters more than the images. The father does not open with the danger; he opens with the request, because a heart already given to wisdom is the only reliable defense against a hunter of hearts. The saying compresses the long seduction lectures of chapters 5 through 7 into three verses, and it assumes their teaching: the danger is real, the trap is baited, and the contest is for the heart, not merely the body.
What this verse contributes
This verse contributes the saying's geometry. A pit is deep: the fall is far. A well is narrow: there is no room to maneuver, no way to turn around, walls close on every side. Together the images say what the lectures of chapters 5 and 7 took pages to say: this sin is easier to enter than to exit, and its shape works against escape. The sages chose landscape instead of lecture because a young man will forget an argument and remember a hole. Note the restraint, too: the verse describes the trap, not the woman's worth; the book elsewhere gives the seductress a voice and a history (7:6–23), and the posture throughout is warning the son, not degrading her.
Related: Proverbs 22:14 · Proverbs 5:3–5
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Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.