Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are movable, that thou canst not know them. This verse should be rather rendered, she walks not in the path of life, her ways fiuctuate, she knows not.
It consists of a series of independent proposiyions or statements, all of which are descriptive of the singularly fatuous conduct of "the strange woman." In the previous verse the teacher has said that her conduct leads to ruin; he here further emphasizes the idea by putting forward the same truth from the opposite, or, as we may say, from the negative point of view, and so completes the picture.
"The words," as Plumptre remarks, "describe with terrible vividness the state of heart and soul which prostitution brings on its victims." Her course is one o(persistent, wilful, headstrong, blind folly and wickedness.
Lest; pen; here "not," equivalent to לא (lo). So the LXX; Vulgate, Targum, Syriac. The use of pen, in this sense is, however, unique (Gesenius). Delitzsch and Zockler, following Luther, Geier, Holden, etc; assign to it an emphatic negative force, as, "She is far removed from entering," or, "she never treadeth."
Others take pen as a dependent prohibitive particle, equivalent to the Latin ne forte, "lest," as in the Authorized Version, and employed to connect the sentence which it introduces either with the preceding verse (as Schultens) or with the second hemistich, on which it is made dependent (Holden, Wordsworth, Aben Ezra, loc; Michaelis, etc.
). Thou shouldest ponder; t'phalles, connected by makkeph with pen, as usual (Lee), is either second person masculine or third person feminine. The latter is required here, the subject of the sentence being "the strange woman," as appears clearly from the second hemistich, "her ways," etc.
The verb patas (cf. Proverbs 14:26) here means "to prepare," i.e. to walk in, or to travel over. Thus Gesenius renders, "She (the adulteress) prepareth not (for herself) the way of life:" i.e. she does not walk in the way of life; cf.
the LXX. εἰσέρχεται, Vulgate ambulant (sc. gressus ejus), and other ancient versions, all of which understand the verb in this sense. The meaning of the phrase, pen t'phalles, is, therefore, "she walks not" in the way of life—the way that has life for its object, and which in itself is full of life and safety.
Far from doing this, the teacher goes on to say, her ways are movable; literally, go to and fro, or fluctuate; i.e. they wilfully stagger hither and thither, like the steps of a drunkard, or like the uncertain steps of the blind, for the verb nua is so used in the former sense in Isaiah 24:20; Isaiah 29:9; Psalms 107:27; and in the latter in Lamentations 4:14.
Her steps are slippery (LXX; σφαλέραι), or wander (Vulgate, vagi); they are without any definite aim; she is always straying in the vagrancy of sin (Wordsworth); cf. Proverbs 7:12. That thou canst not know them (lo theda); literally, she knows not.
The elliptical form of this sentence in the original leaves it open to various interpretations. It seems to refer to the way of life; she knows not the way of life, i.e. she does not regard or perceive the way of life.
The verb yada often has this meaning. The meaning may be obtained by supplying mah, equivalent to quicquam, "anything," as in Proverbs 9:13, "She knows not anything," i.e. she knows nothing. The objection to this is that it travels unnecessarily out of the sentence to find the object which ought rather to be supplied from the context.
The object may possibly be the staggering of her feet: she staggers hither and thither without her perceiving it (Delitzsch); or it may, lastly, be indefinite: she knows not whittler her steps conduct her (Wordsworth and Zockler).