Proverbs 5:15 - Meaning and Application

Solomon has already shown the great evil of adultery, fornication, and all filthy conduct. Now he gives remedies against them. One remedy is to enjoy the comforts of lawful marriage, which God gave to guard against uncleanness. People should use that gift in the right time, so it can prevent sin instead of trying to cure what it first should have stopped.

No one should complain that God is unkind because he forbids pleasures we naturally desire. He has kindly provided a right and lawful way to enjoy them. We may not eat from every tree in the garden, but we are given one that we may freely enjoy. Nature is satisfied with that, but lust is never satisfied with anything. By limiting a man to one wife, God is not laying a hardship on him. He is protecting his true good.

Solomon presses this point strongly. The allowed pleasures of marriage are far better than the false and forbidden pleasures of sexual sin. Young men should marry, and not “burn,” that is, not be consumed with lust. They should have their own cistern and well, meaning the wife of their youth (Pro 5:18). They should either remain chaste or marry.

A married man should delight in his wife and be very attached to her. He should do this not only because she is the woman he chose, but because she is the wife God gave him in his providence. He should be glad in her because she is his own. Let your fountain be blessed (Pro 5:18). Think yourself happy in her. See her as a blessing, pray for her daily, and then rejoice with her. The joys God gives us are the ones most likely to stay sweet when they are made holy by prayer and God’s blessing.

God not only allows this, he commands us to be cheerful in our close relations. It especially fits husband and wife to rejoice together and in each other. Shared delight helps hold mutual faithfulness together. It is not only assumed that a bridegroom rejoices over his bride (Isaiah 62:5), but also made a duty. “Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your life” (Ecclesiastes 9:9). People miss God’s best gifts when they are lively and cheerful with friends outside the home, but cold and sour with their own families.

A man should also be tenderly fond of his wife and love her deeply (Pro 5:19). Let her be like a loving deer and a pleasant doe, gentle and delightful. In the past, great men sometimes kept such tame animals in their homes and played with them. In the same way, let a man find innocent pleasure and comfort in the company of his own wife. Let her be as close and dear to him as the poor man’s lamb was to him in Nathan’s parable (2 Samuel 12:3). Let that satisfy him at all times, and let him not seek pleasure elsewhere.

If a man’s love grows strong enough to become excessive, let it be only for his own wife, where there is the least danger of going too far. This is like drinking water from your own cistern, clear, sweet, and wholesome water from your own well (Pro 5:15). Such marriage joy is honorable and safe. Paul speaks of the same care for marriage rights in (1 Corinthians 7:2, 3).

A man should also take delight in his children and look on them with pleasure (Pro 5:16, Pro 5:17). He should see them as streams flowing from his own pure fountain. The Jews are said to come from the waters of Judah (Isaiah 48:1), and in that same way children are parts of a man’s own line. If a man keeps to his own wife, he may expect children that are his in several good ways.

He will have a numerous family, like rivers of water running in abundance. They will spread out into other families through marriage, while children of sexual sin do not continue to increase (Hosea 4:10). He will also have children that are truly his own, while children born through unfaithfulness may not even be his, for all he knows, though he must still bear the burden of them. And he will have honorable children, children that are a credit to him and that he can show openly without shame. A man’s virtue brings both pleasure and honor, and for that reason it is rightly called wisdom.

So let him despise the offer of forbidden pleasure. If he is already satisfied with the love of a faithful and virtuous wife, it is foolish to be drawn to a strange woman (Pro 5:20), a filthy prostitute, and to embrace the body of a stranger. If he has any sense of honor or virtue, he should be disgusted even by the thought of it. Why should he be so foolish and so harmful to himself as to prefer dirty, stolen, and poisoned water to the pure living water from his own well? If reason is heard, the laws of virtue will be obeyed.

He should also keep God’s eye always in view and let God’s fear rule his heart (Pro 5:21). People who live in this sin often promise themselves secrecy. The adulterer waits for twilight (Job 24:15). But what use is secrecy when nothing can be hidden from God? He sees it. The Lord sees all a man’s ways, all his movements, all his actions, and all the hidden thoughts and plans of his heart. He sees what is done in secret, even when it is carefully hidden and cleverly disguised. He sees it clearly, with every cause, circumstance, and result.

God does not merely glance at human conduct now and then. It is always before him. It is always under his inspection. Dare a person sin against God in his sight, and do what is wicked under his eye, what he would never dare do in front of another person like himself? God will also call the sinner to account for it. He not only sees, he weighs every step and judges it, as one who will soon judge the sinner for those actions. Every deed is weighed and will be brought into judgment (Ecclesiastes 12:14). That is a strong reason to think carefully about the path of our feet (Pro 4:26) and judge ourselves now, so that we may not be judged later.

We should also see the certain ruin of those who keep going in this sin. People who live this way often promise themselves they will escape punishment, but they deceive themselves. Their sin will find them out (Pro 5:22, 23). The apostle sums it up briefly: “God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers” (Hebrews 13:4). This is a sin from which men have great trouble freeing themselves.

When a sinner grows old and weak, his lusts can still stay strong and active. Memory often brings back the pleasures of youth, as in Ezekiel 23:19. In this way, his own sins seize him because he gave himself to them. He chose to surrender himself to them, and now he is held by the ropes of his own sin.

Sin can gain such control over a person that he cannot free himself. In his great foolishness, and what greater foolishness could there be than to become the servant of such cruel masters, he keeps wandering farther and farther away. Sexual impurity is one of those sins from which people very rarely recover once they have thrown themselves into it. It leaves a deep hold on them, and they often do not escape it.

This sin is also one from which, if it is not turned from, people cannot escape punishment. It will surely bring ruin. As their own sins seize them in the shame of guilt and present rebuke (Jeremiah 7:19), so those same sins will also hold them for God’s judgment. No prison and no chains are needed. They are already held by the cords of their own sins, just as the fallen angels, because they are fixed in evil, are kept in chains of darkness.

The sinner who has often been warned but still refuses correction will die at last without instruction. He has already received enough general warning. He will not be given special warnings before the end. He will die without seeing the danger ahead, because he would not accept instruction. In the greatness of his folly, he chose to go astray, and so he will never find the way home again.

Those who are foolish enough to choose the path of sin are rightly left by God to follow it until it leads them to destruction. That is a strong reason for us to guard ourselves carefully and firmly against the pull of sinful desire.