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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 5:18 - 5:18
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With Pro 5:18 is introduced anew the praise of conjugal love. These three verses, Pro 5:18-21, have the same course of thought as Pro 5:15-17.
18 Let thy fountain be blessed,
And rejoice in the wife of thy youth.
19 The lovely hind and the graceful gazelle -
May her bosom always charm thee;
In her love mayest thou delight thyself evermore.
20 But why wilt thou be fascinated with a stranger,
And embrace the bosom of a foreign woman?
Like בור and באר, מָקוֹר is also a figure of the wife; the root-word is קוּר, from קר, כר, the meanings of which, to dig and make round, come together in the primary conception of the round digging out or boring out, not קוּר = קָרַר, the Hiph. of which means (Jer 6:7) to well out cold (water). It is the fountain of the birth that is meant (cf. מָקוֹר of the female עֶרְוָה, e.g., Lev 20:18), not the procreation (lxx, ἡ σὴ φλέψ, viz., φλὲψ γονίμη); the blessing wished for by him is the blessing of children, which בָּרוּךְ so much the more distinctly denotes if בָּרַךְ, Arab. barak, means to spread out, and בֵּרֵךְ thus to cause a spreading out. The מִן, 18b, explains itself from the idea of drawing (water), given with the figure of a fountain; the word בְּאשׁת found in certain codices is, on the contrary, prosaic (Fl.). Whilst שׂמח מִן is found elsewhere (Ecc 2:20; 2Ch 20:27) as meaning almost the same as שׂמח בְּ; the former means rejoicing from some place, the latter in something. In the genitive connection, “wife of thy youth” (cf. Pro 2:17), both of these significations lie: thy youthful wife, and she who was chosen by thee in thy youth, according as we refer the suffix to the whole idea or only to the second member of the chain of words.
Pro 5:19
The subject, 19a, set forth as a theme courts love for her who is to be loved, for she presents herself as lovely. אַיֶּלֶת is the female of the stag, which may derive its name אַיָּל from the weapon-power of its horns, and יַעֲלָה (from יָעַל, Arab. w'al, to climb), that of the wild-goat (יָעֵל); and thus properly, not the gazelle, which is called צְבִי on account of its elegance, but the chamois. These animals are commonly used in Semitic poetry as figures of female beauty on account of the delicate beauty of their limbs and their sprightly black eyes. אֲהָבִים signifies always sensual love, and is interchanged in this erotic meaning (Pro 7:18) with דּוֹדִים. In 19b the predicate follows the subject. The Graec. Venet. translates as if the word were דודיה, and the Syr. as if it were דרכיה, but Aquila rightly translates τίτθοι αὐτῆς. As τίτθος is derived (vid., Curtius, Griech. Etymologie, Nr. 307) from dhâ, to suck (causative, with anu, to put to sucking), so דַּד, שַׁד, תַּד, Arab. thady (commonly in dual thadjein), from שָׁדָה, Arab. thdy, rigare, after which also the verb יְרַוּוּךָ is chosen: she may plentifully give thee to drink; figuratively equivalent to, refresh or (what the Aram. רַוִּי precisely means) fascinate
(Note: Many editions have here בְּכָל־; but this Dagesh, which is contrary to rule, is to be effaced.)
thee, satisfy thee with love. דַּדִּים also is an erotic word, which besides in this place is found only in Ezekiel (Eze 23:3, Eze 23:8, Eze 23:21). The lxx obliterates the strong sensual colouring of this line. In 19c it changes תִּשְׁגֶּה into תשׂגה, πολλοστὸς ἔσῃ, perhaps also because the former appeared to be too sensual. Moses ha-Darshan (in Rashi) proposes to explain it after the Arab. sjy, to cover, to cast over, to come over anything (III = עסק, to employ oneself with something): engage thyself with her love, i.e., be always devoted to her in love. And Immanuel himself, the author of a Hebrew Divan expatiating with unparalleled freedom in erotic representations, remarks, while he rightly understands תשׁגה of the fascination of love: קורא התמדת חשׁקו אפילו באשׁתו שׁגגה, he calls the husband's continual caressing of the wife an error. But this moral side-glance lies here at a distance from the poet. He speaks here of a morally permissible love-ecstasy, or rather, since תמיד excludes that which is extraordinary, of an intensity of love connected with the feeling of superabundant happiness. שָׁגָה properly signifies to err from the way, therefore figuratively, with ב of a matter, like delirare ea, to be wholly captivated by her, so that one is no longer in his own power, can no longer restrain himself - the usual word for the intoxication of love and of wine, Pro 20:1 (Fl.).
Pro 5:20
The answer to the Why? in this verse is: no reasonable cause - only beastly sensuality, only flagitious blindness can mislead thee. The ב of בְזָרָה is, as 19b and Isa 28:7, that of the object through which one is betrayed into intoxication. חֵק (thus, according to the Masora, four times in the O.T. for חֵיק) properly means an incision or deepening, as Arab. hujr (from hjr, cohibere), the front of the body, the part between the arms or the female breasts, thus the bosom, Isa 40:11 (with the swelling part of the clothing, sinus vestis, which the Arabs call jayb), and the lap; חִבֵּק (as Pro 4:8), to embrace, corresponds here more closely with the former of these meanings; also elsewhere the wife of any one is called אשת חיקו or השׁכבת בחיקו, as she who rests on his breast. The ancients, also J. H. Michaelis, interpret Pro 5:15-20 allegorically, but without thereby removing sensual traces from the elevated N.T. consciousness of pollution, striving against all that is fleshly; for the castum cum Sapientia conjugium would still be always represented under the figure of husband and wife dwelling together. Besides, though זרה might be, as the contrast of חכמה, the personified lust of the world and of the flesh, yet 19a is certainly not the חכמה, but a woman composed of flesh and blood. Thus the poet means the married life, not in a figurative sense, but in its reality - he designedly describes it thus attractively and purely, because it bears in itself the preservative against promiscuous fleshly lust.