Bible Strands
Proverbs 23:28
Like a robber she lies in wait and multiplies the faithless among men.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The text addresses a wisdom student immediately after describing a prostitute as a deep pit and narrow well. The speaker continues the warning against sexual immorality before transitioning to the physical and emotional consequences of drunkenness in the following verse.
The words — The Hebrew תֶּֽאֱרֹ֑ב (te'ero) means "she lies in wait," paired with תּוֹסִֽף (tosif), "she increases" or "multiplies." These verbs describe the active, predatory mechanism of the woman introduced in the preceding line.
The thread — The text presents the woman as a calculated ambush that expands spiritual corruption before interpreters characterize her as a symbol of idolatry or moral decay. The same ambush imagery runs through Ecclesiastes 7:26 and Proverbs 7:12, where she is called a snare and a net that lurks at every corner.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that sexual immorality operates as a deliberate trap that multiplies faithlessness among men. It requires the reader to treat the warning as a concrete danger requiring immediate avoidance rather than abstract caution.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.
Cross-references
- Ecclesiastes 7:26 And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a net, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is ensnared.
- Proverbs 7:12 Now in the street, now in the squares, she lurks at every corner.
- Hosea 4:11 to promiscuity, wine, and new wine, which take away understanding.
- 1 Corinthians 10:8 We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died.
- Proverbs 22:14 The mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit; he who is under the wrath of the LORD will fall into it.
- Revelation 17:1 Then one of the seven angels with the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.
- Proverbs 2:16 It will rescue you from the forbidden woman, from the stranger with seductive words
- Proverbs 7:22 He follows her on impulse, like an ox going to the slaughter, like a deer bounding into a trap,
- Jeremiah 3:2 “Lift up your eyes to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been violated? You sat beside the highways waiting for your lovers, like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness.
- Numbers 25:1 While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with the daughters of Moab,