Encouragement to Moral Purity
May 6, 2019
Commentary
The Lord has made provision for man’s happiness, not through immoral entanglements but through the blessings of married life. Marital love with one’s wife is pictured as enjoying one’s cistern or fountain. As a person would not get water from his neighbor’s cistern because he had his own (II Kings 18:31), so a man should have his physical needs met by his own wife, not someone else’s. In verse 20 the question is asked, “And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?” In other words, why would anyone want to drink from a water supply that is known to be poisoned?
The consequences of adultery should be enough to motivate a person to avoid it (vv. 7-14). However, we now find four additional reasons:
- Adultery committed in secret is known by the Lord (v. 21).
- God not only sees but examines man’s conduct (v. 21).
- Sin ties a person like ropes (v. 22).
- Being undisciplined in one’s moral life leads to death (v. 23).
Application
I must constantly remind myself of how wonderful the marriage relationship is as God ordained it to be and how terrible sex is outside of marriage. I need to be praying and asking God to keep each member of my family clean and pure and reserved only for the one they marry.
Proverbs 5:15– 23 (NET)
15 Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well.
16 Should your springs be dispersed outside, your streams of water in the wide plazas?
17 Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.
18 May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife you married in your youth —
19 a loving doe, a graceful deer; may her breasts satisfy you at all times, may you be captivated by her love always.
20 But why should you be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, and embrace the bosom of a different woman?
21 For the ways of a person are in front of the Lord’s eyes, and the Lord weighs all that person’s paths.
22 The wicked will be captured by his own iniquities, and he will be held by the cords of his own sin.
23 He will die because there was no discipline; because of the greatness of his folly he will reel.