Even the highway of God, though a path of safety, is beset with temptation Satan is so angry with none as with those who are going right on.—Bridges.
Verse 16. Wisdom sets up her school to instruct the ignorant: Folly sets up her school next door to defeat the designs of Wisdom. Thus the saying of the satirist appears to be verified:—
“Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil surely builds a chapel there;
And it is found, upon examination,
The latter has the larger congregation.”—Defoe.
—Adam Clark.
Folly does not invite the scorners, because she is secure of them, but only the “simple,” i.e., those who are such in the judgment of the Holy Spirit. Scripture expresses not what she says in outward words, but what is the reality. Whosoever turns in to her is a simpleton. Cartwright takes it that she calls the pious “simple.” Verse 15 favours this.—Fausset.
Verse 17. Folly shows her skill in seduction by holding out, in promise, the secret enjoyment of forbidden sweets. Alas! since the entrance of sin into the world, there has been perverse propensity to aught that is forbidden, to taste what is laid under an interdict. The very interdiction draws towards it the wistful desires, and looks, and longings of the perverse and rebellious heart.—Wardlaw.
The power of sin lies in its pleasure. If stolen waters were not sweet, none would steal the waters. This is part of the mystery in which our being is involved by the fall. It is one of the most fearful features of the case. Our appetite is diseased. . . . Oh, for the new tastes of a new nature! “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” When a soul has tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious, the foolish woman beckons you toward her stolen waters, and praises their sweetness in vain. The new appetite drives out the old.—Arnot.
Many eat that on earth that they digest in hell.—Trapp.
Indirect ways best please flesh and blood. “Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence” (Rom. vii. 8). We take this from our first parents, a greedy desire to eat of the forbidden fruit. All the other trees in the garden, although the fruit were as good, would not satisfy them. . . . Such is the corruption of our nature, that we like best what God likes worst.—Francis Taylor.
Verse 18. Of course “he knows not.” If the sinner only knew that he were already dead, he might wake up with a bound to the work of his salvation.—Miller.