Spreadeth a net for his feet - Beware of a flatterer; he does not flatter merely to please you, but to deceive you and profit himself.

A man that flattereth his neighbour (a) spreadeth a net for his feet.
(a) He who gives ear to the flatterer is in danger as the bird is before the fowler.

A man that flattereth his neighbour,.... That speaks smooth things to him gives him flattering titles, speaks fair to his face, highly commends him on one account or another:
spreadeth a net for his feet; has an idle design upon him, and therefore should be guarded against; his view is to draw him into a snare and make a prey of him; he attacks him on his weak side, and hopes to make some advantage of it to himself; wherefore flatterers should be avoided as pernicious persons; or he spreads a net for his own feet, and is taken in the snare which he had laid for his neighbour; or falls into the pit he dug for him, as Gersom observes; see Psalm 140:5.

Flatterers put men off their guard, which betrays them into foolish conduct.

(Compare Proverbs 26:28).
spreadeth . . . feet--By misleading him as to his real character, the flatterer brings him to evil, prepared by himself or others.

5 A man who flattereth his neighbour
Spreadeth a net for his steps.
Fleischer, as Bertheau: vir qui alterum blanditiis circumvenit; but in the על there does not lie in itself a hostile tendency, an intention to do injury; it interchanges with אל, Psalm 36:3, and what is expressed in line second happens also, without any intention on the part of the flatterer: the web of the flatterer before the eyes of a neighbour becomes, if he is caught thereby, a net for him in which he is entangled to his own destruction (Hitzig). החליק signifies also, without any external object, Proverbs 28:23; Proverbs 2:16, as internally transitive: to utter that which is smooth, i.e., flattering. פּעמיו is, as Psalm 57:7 = רגליו, for which it is the usual Phoenician word.