This verse sits inside Wisdom's banquet, Proverbs 9:1–6, and is repeated almost exactly by the other woman in verse 16.
Quick answer
The guest list, and it is the opposite of exclusive. She calls the naive and the one with no judgment yet, which is to say the people least likely to be invited anywhere.
Read the whole unit
Collection I ends the way a well-built argument ends, by putting the whole thing in one picture. Two women have set two tables. Both are in the same city, both call from its highest places, and both are calling the same people. One of them is Wisdom, and this is her half.
She builds first. Verses 1 and 2 are a run of finished work: a house built, pillars hewn, meat slaughtered, wine mixed, the table set. Nothing about her offer is improvised, and nothing about it is cheap; a household that slaughters an animal and mixes wine is putting on the best it has. Only then does she send out her servants and start calling.
Who she calls is the point. Not the wise, not the accomplished, not the qualified: "whoever is simple," and the one who "lacks understanding," which the Hebrew puts as lacking heart. Those are the two least promising categories in the book, and they are the only two she names. The invitation goes to the people with the least to bring.
A note on the chapter's design that matters for reading either half. Wisdom's invitation in verse 4 and Folly's invitation in verse 16 are, in Hebrew, the same sentence. Word for word, apart from two small connecting words. Both women stand at the high point of the city, both address the simple and the one lacking heart, and both say turn in here. The chapter is built to make that overlap unmissable, and the reason is the honest one: from the street, the two invitations sound alike. What separates them is not the volume, the warmth, or the wording. It is what is actually on the table and where the guests end up, and neither of those is visible from the road.
That is why the chapter gives Wisdom the whole preparation sequence before she says a word. She has something to serve. The test the reader is being handed is not "which voice sounds more appealing" but "which one has built a house."
What this verse contributes
This verse names who the banquet is for, and both terms are generous rather than insulting. "Simple" in this book is the open and unformed category, still able to go either way, and "lacks understanding" is literally lacking heart, the same idiom used of the adulterer at 6:32 and the young man in the street at 7:7. Wisdom is calling exactly the person chapter 7 watched walk into disaster. That is the mercy hidden in the verse: the figure the book has spent eight chapters worrying about is the one being invited to dinner.
Why translations differ
Nothing here is disputed, but one feature of the Hebrew is worth knowing because it shapes the whole chapter. This verse and verse 16, where Folly speaks, are word for word identical apart from two small connecting words. Both women address the simple and the one lacking heart, and both say turn in here. English translations render them nearly identically, and they are right to. The repetition is the chapter's design rather than an accident, and it makes a point no commentary needs to add: the two invitations sound the same from the street.
Related: Proverbs 9:16 · Proverbs 7:7 · Proverbs 1:22
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.