Enjoy Your Marriage

Proverbs 5:15 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
    flowing water from your own well.

Drink water from your own cistern: The Bible is not squeamish about sexual relations, and we do well to follow that example if we are to help our young ones avoid the pitfalls of this world. The cistern (בּוֹר bor) or well is an underground tank for storing precious rainwater and is being used as a poetic expression for the precious wife, who satisfies the desires of her husband. This is considered a private water source, unlike the water supply in public places. Therefore, the point is quite straightforward, just as you drink water from your own cistern or, well, you only have sexual relations with your own wife.

Flowing water from your own well: Having sexual pleasure with one’s wife is compared to drinking refreshing water from your own well. This comparison may not resonate with many in our modern world, but ancient Palestine had a dry climate that left them waterless at times. Moreover, they had to dig wells to seek water, so it was a precious staple of life. This figurative language instructs the husband to have sexual relations only with his wife. Just as the precious water of the arid climate of Palestine from the husband’s own well brought physical life to the husband, so to sexual intimacy from his wife brought pleasure to his life.

Solomon had just walked us through the evil that exists in adultery and fornication, and all the lewd and filthy thoughts that impact the emotions and then the behavior. Now, he is giving us the answer on avoiding sexual immorality. We need to enjoy our legal marriages, which will prevent unclean thoughts and immoral behaviors. This is why choosing one’s marriage partner is not to be rushed. God has given us the means of fulfilling the sexual pleasures that are natural desires and should never be ignored in a marriage. Solomon, here, builds upon this, not only recommending it as a solution but advising it as an argument against fornication. The sexual pleasures of marriage far surpass all the untrue illicit pleasures of sexual immorality.

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