This verse is a brief warning about adultery, a topic that is dealt with very fully in chapters 5 and 7. The two lines are linked as two parts of one statement.

“The mouth of a loose woman is a deep pit”: For “loose woman” see 2.16 and 7.5. Her “mouth” is a way of referring to her seductive speech; so Contemporary English Version has “the words of a bad woman” and Scott “the speech of harlots.” “A deep pit” is a figure of speech, meaning something that will catch and harm a person just as a pit or trap catches and harms an animal. Some versions express the figure as a simile and say “. . . like a deep pit” (Revised English Bible, Contemporary English Version). For the whole line Good News Translation says simply “adultery is a trap.”

“He with whom the Lord is angry will fall into it”: In this context “he with whom the Lord is angry” must be a man, a male person. “Angry” is the ordinary sense of the Hebrew term, although “[the man the Lord] has cursed” is also possible. Although there may be no clear connection in the Hebrew between the Lord being “angry” with a person and that person falling into the trap of adultery, many interpreters understand that the Lord punishes men who anger him by letting them fall into the pit of adultery. One translation that gives a clear link for readers says “If the Lord wants to punish a man for his evil behavior, he lets that man fall into the pit.” For the whole verse Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch has “The seductive words of the foreign woman are a trap; when God is angry with you, you are caught by it.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .