Albert Barnes Commentary Proverbs 20:16

"Take his garment that is surety for a stranger; And hold him in pledge [that is surety] for foreigners." — Proverbs 20:16 (ASV)

The warning against suretyship and lust is here repeated and combined . The judge tells the creditor to seize the goods of the surety who has been weak enough to pledge himself for those who are strangers to him, instead of those of the actual debtor. The reading of the King James Version recalls in the second clause the history of Tamar (Genesis 38:17–18). The Hebrew text, however, gives “strangers” in the masculine plural, and is probably right, the feminine being the reading of the margin, probably adopted from Proverbs 27:13.