Proverbs 2:17

Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(17) The guide of her youth.—Or rather, friend with whom she has lived in intimacy: that is, the husband of her youth; in other words, her first love. Jeremiah uses the same phrase (Proverbs 3:4). (Comp. “wife of thy youth,” Proverbs 5:18; Malachi 2:14.)

Forgetteth the covenant of her God—i.e., the marriage covenant, made in the presence of God. (Comp. “wife of thy covenant,” Mal. l.c.)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:10-22 If we are truly wise, we shall be careful to avoid all evil company and evil practices. When wisdom has dominion over us, then it not only fills the head, but enters into the heart, and will preserve, both against corruptions within and temptations without. The ways of sin are ways of darkness, uncomfortable and unsafe: what fools are those who leave the plain, pleasant, lightsome paths of uprightness, to walk in such ways! They take pleasure in sin; both in committing it, and in seeing others commit it. Every wise man will shun such company. True wisdom will also preserve from those who lead to fleshly lusts, which defile the body, that living temple, and war against the soul. These are evils which excite the sorrow of every serious mind, and cause every reflecting parent to look upon his children with anxiety, lest they should be entangled in such fatal snares. Let the sufferings of others be our warnings. Our Lord Jesus deters from sinful pleasures, by the everlasting torments which follow them. It is very rare that any who are caught in this snare of the devil, recover themselves; so much is the heart hardened, and the mind blinded, by the deceitfulness of this sin. Many think that this caution, besides the literal sense, is to be understood as a caution against idolatry, and subjecting the soul to the body, by seeking any forbidden object. The righteous must leave the earth as well as the wicked; but the earth is a very different thing to them. To the wicked it is all the heaven they ever shall have; to the righteous it is the place of preparation for heaven. And is it all one to us, whether we share with the wicked in the miseries of their latter end, or share those everlasting joys that shall crown believers?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The guide of her youth - Better, the familiar friend (compare Proverbs 16:28; Proverbs 17:9). The "friend" is, of course, the husband, or the man to whom the strange woman first belonged as a recognized concubine. Compare Jeremiah 3:4

The covenant of her God - The sin of the adulteress is not against man only but against the Law of God, against His covenant. The words point to some religious formula of espousals. Compare Malachi 2:14.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

17. guide … youth—lawful husband (Jer 3:4).

covenant … God—of marriage made in God's name.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The guide of her youth, to wit, her husband, whom she took to be her guide and governor, and that in her youth: which circumstance is added to aggravate her sin and shame, because love is commonly most sincere and fervent between a husband and wife of youth, as they are for that reason emphatically called, Proverbs 5:18 Isaiah 54:6 Joel 1:8 Malachi 2:14,15.

Forgetteth, i.e. violateth or breaketh, as that word is commonly used in a practical sense.

The covenant of her God; the marriage covenant; so called, partly because God is the author and institutor of that society and mutual obligation; and partly because God is called to be the witness and judge of that solemn promise and covenant, and the avenger of the transgression of it.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Which forsaketh the guide of her youth,.... Not God, the God of her life, and who had provided for her from her youth up; nor her parent that had taken care of her in her infancy, and had been the guardian of her virgin state; but her husband, to whom she was married in her youth, and to whom she gave up herself to be guided and directed, ruled and governed, by: and as it is an aggravation of evil in a man to deal treacherously against the wife of his youth, and the wife of his covenant, Malachi 2:14; so it is in a woman to forsake "the friend" or "companion of her youth" (w), as the phrase may be rendered; who loved her and espoused her in his youthful age, and with whom he had lived long in love and friendship, and in great happiness, but now forsakes him; her affections being alienated from him, leaves his company and bed, and associates with others. Gersom interprets this of the human understanding, appointed to govern the other powers and faculties of the soul;

and forgetteth the covenant of her God: not the covenant made with Noah, in which adultery, as well as other things, were forbidden; nor the law of Moses, or covenant at Sinai, in which it was condemned; but the marriage covenant, which she entered into with her husband when espoused to him, and when they mutually obliged themselves to be faithful to one another: and this is called "the covenant of God"; not only because God is the author and institutor of marriage, and has directed and enjoined persons to enter into such a contract with one another; but because he is present at it, and is a witness of such an engagement, mid is appealed unto in it; which, as it adds to the solemnity of it, makes the violation of it the more criminal. So the church of Rome has forsook Christ, who was her guide in her first settlement, and her husband she professed to be espoused to, as a chaste virgin; and has followed other lovers, and become the mother of harlots; so false teachers leave their guide, the Scriptures, and bring in damnable heresies, and deny the Lord that bought them, 2 Peter 2:1.

(w) "amieum adolescentiae suae", De Dieu, Michaelis; "socium juventutis suae", Schultens.

Geneva Study Bible

Which forsaketh the {k} guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.

(k) That is, her husband, who is her head and guide to govern her, from whom she ought not to depart, but remain in his subjection.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

17. the guide of her youth] or, friend, R.V. or, associate, i.e. her husband to whom she was married in her youth. See Jeremiah 3:4, where the same phrase occurs in the same sense. Comp. “wife of thy youth,” Proverbs 5:18; Malachi 2:14.

covenant of her God] The marriage contract, which is of Divine origin and sanction (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6). Comp. “the wife of thy covenant,” Malachi 2:14, and note there in this Series. To the tender memories of “the kindness of youth and the love of espousals” (Jeremiah 2:2) is added the binding force of “the vow and covenant betwixt them made.”

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 17. - The guide of her youth (נְעוּרֶיהָ אַלּוּפ, alluph n'ureyah); properly, the associate or companion of her youth. The Hebrew, אָלּוּפ (alluph), being derived from the root אָלַפ, (alaph), "to accustom one's self to," or "to be accustomed to" or "familiar with" anyone. The word is rendered as "friend" in Proverbs 17:9; Proverbs 16:28; Micah 7:5. The idea of guidance, which is adopted in the Authorized Version, and appears also in the Vulgate dux. and Targum ducatus, is a secondary idea, and is derived probably from the relation in which the husband stands to his wife. Various interpretations have been given to the expression. It occurs again in Jeremiah 3:4, where Jehovah applies it to himself, and says, through his prophet, to the religiously adulterous Judah, "Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My Father, thou art the Guide of my youth (אַלּוּפ נְעֻרי, alluph n'ura)?" It has also been understood as referring to the woman's parents, her father and mother, who were her natural guardians. But the context seems to require that it should be taken as designating her husband. It will then be the correlative of "the wife of thy youth" of Malachi 2:14. The covenant of her God; i.e. the marriage covenant, called "the covenant of her God," because entered into in his presence. The forsaking of the guide of her youth is essentially bound up with a forgetfulness of the solemn covenant which she had entered into in the presence of God. No specific mention is made in the Pentateuch of any religious ceremony at marriage; yet we may infer, from Malachi 2:14, 15, where God is spoken of as "a Witness" between the husband and "the wife of his youth," "the wife of thy covenant," that the marriage contract was solemnized with sacred rites. The Proverbs thus give a high and sacred character to marriage, and so carry on the original idea of the institution which, under the gospel dispensation, developed late the principle of the indissolubility of the marriage tie. It is no objection to this view that the monogamic principle was infringed, and polygamy countenanced. The reason of this latter departure is given in Deuteronomy 22:28 and Exodus 22:16. The morality of the Proverbs always represents monogamy as the rule, it deprecates illicit intercourse, and discountenances divorce. It is in entire accordance with the seventh commandment. The woman who commits adultery offends, not only against her husband, but against her God. Proverbs 2:17

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

17 Who forsakes the companion of her youth,

     And forgets the covenant of her God;

18 For she sinks down to death together with her house,

     And to the shadow of Hades her paths -

19 All they who go to her return not again,

     And reach not the paths of life

אלּוּף, as here used, has nothing to do with the phylarch-name, similar in sound, which is a denom. of אלף; but it comes immediately from אלף, to accustom oneself to a person or cause, to be familiar therewith (while the Aram. אלף, ילף, to learn, Pa. to teach), and thus means, as the synon. of רע, the companion or familiar associate (vid., Schultens). Parallels such as Jeremiah 3:4 suggested to the old interpreters the allegorical explanation of the adulteress as the personification of the apostasy or of heresy. Proverbs 2:18 the lxx translate: ἔθετο γὰρ παρὰ τῷ θανάτῳ τὸν οἶκον αὐτῆς: she (the dissolute wife) has placed her house beside death (the abyss of death). This שׁחה [ἔθετο] is perhaps the original, for the text as it lies before us is doubtful, though, rightly understood, admissible. The accentuation marks בּיתהּ as the subject, but בּית is elsewhere always masc., and does not, like the rarer ארח, Proverbs 2:15, admit in usage a double gender; also, if the fem. usage were here introduced (Bertheau, Hitzig), then the predicate, even though ביתה were regarded as fem., might be, in conformity with rule, שׁח, as e.g., Isaiah 2:17. שׁחה is, as in Psalm 44:26, 3rd pr. of שׁוּח, Arab. sâkh, to go down, to sink; the emendation שׁחה (Joseph Kimchi) does not recommend itself on this account, that שׁחה and שׁחח mean, according to usage, to stoop or to bend down; and to interpret (Ralbag, השׁפילה) שׁחה transitively is inadmissible. For that reason Aben Ezra interprets ביתה as in apposition: to death, to its house; but then the poet in that case should say אל־שׁאול, for death is not a house. On the other hand, we cannot perceive in ביתה an accus. of the nearer definition (J. H. Michaelis, Fl.); the expression would here, as 15a, be refined without purpose. Bttcher has recognised ביתה as permutative, the personal subject: for she sinks down to death, her house, i.e., she herself, together with all that belongs to her; cf. the permutative of the subject, Job 29:3; Isaiah 29:23 (vid., comm. l.c.), and the more particularly statement of the object, Exodus 2:6, etc. Regarding רפאים, shadows of the under-world (from רפה, synon. חלה, weakened, or to become powerless), a word common to the Solomonic writings, vid., Comment. on Isaiah, p. 206. What Proverbs 2:18 says of the person of the adulteress, Proverbs 2:19 says of those who live with her ביתה, her house-companions. בּאיה, "those entering in to her," is equivalent to בּאים אליה; the participle of verbs eundi et veniendi takes the accusative object of the finite as gen. in st. constr., as e.g., Proverbs 1:12; Proverbs 2:7; Genesis 23:18; Genesis 9:10 (cf. Jeremiah 10:20). The ישׁוּבוּן, with the tone on the ult., is a protestation: there is no return for those who practise fornication,

(Note: One is here reminded of the expression in the Aeneid, vi. 127-129:

Revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,

Hoc opes, hoc labor est.

See also an impure but dreadful Talmudic story about a dissolute Rabbi, b. Aboda zara, 17a.)

and they do not reach the paths of life from which they have so widely strayed.

(Note: In correct texts ולא־ישיגו has the Makkeph. Vid., Torath Emeth, p. 41; Accentuationssystem, xx. 2.)