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tProv 5:18 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, מקור 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 = קרר, the Hiph. of which means (Jer 6:7) to well out cold (water). It is the fountain of the birth that is meant (cf. מקור of the female ערוה, 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 בּרוּך so much the more distinctly denotes if בּרך, Arab. barak, means to spread out, and בּרך thus to cause a spreading out. The מן, 18b, explains itself from the idea of drawing (water), given with the figure of a fountain; the word בּאשׁת found in certain codices is, on the contrary, prosaic (Fl.). Whilst שׂמח מן is found elsewhere (Ecc 2:20; Ch2 20:27) as meaning almost the same as שׂמח בּ; 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. איּלת is the female of the stag, which may derive its name איּל from the weapon-power of its horns, and יעלה (from יעל, Arab. w'al, to climb), that of the wild-goat (יעל); and thus properly, not the gazelle, which is called צבי 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. אהבים signifies always sensual love, and is interchanged in this erotic meaning (Pro 7:18) with דּודים. 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 דּד, שׁד, תּד, Arab. thady (commonly in dual thadjein), from שׁדה, Arab. thdy, rigare, after which also the verb ירוּוּך is chosen: she may plentifully give thee to drink; figuratively equivalent to, refresh or (what the Aram. רוּי precisely means) fascinate
(Note: Many editions have here בּכל־; but this Dagesh, which is contrary to rule, is to be effaced.)
thee, satisfy thee with love. דּדּים 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 תּשׁגּה 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. שׁגה 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 בזרה is, as 19b and Isa 28:7, that of the object through which one is betrayed into intoxication. חק (thus, according to the Masora, four times in the O.T. for חיק) 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; חבּק (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. Proverbs 5:21 tProv 5:21 That the intercourse of the sexes out of the married relationship is the commencement of the ruin of a fool is now proved.
21 For the ways of every one are before the eyes of Jahve,
And all his paths He marketh out.
22 His own sins lay hold of him, the evil-doer,
And in the bands of his sins is he held fast.
23 He dies for the want of correction,
And in the fulness of his folly he staggers to ruin.
It is unnecessary to interpret נכח as an adverbial accusative: straight before Jahve's eyes; it may be the nominative of the predicate; the ways of man (for אישׁ is here an individual, whether man or woman) are an object (properly, fixing) of the eyes of Jahve. With this the thought would suitably connect itself: et onmes orbitas ejus ad amussim examinat; but פּלּס, as the denom. of פּלס, Psa 58:3, is not connected with all the places where the verb is united with the obj. of the way, and Psa 78:50 shows that it has there the meaning to break though, to open a way (from פל, to split, cf. Talmudic מפלּשׁ, opened, accessible, from פלשׁ, Syriac pelaa, perfodere, fodiendo viam, aditum sibi aperire). The opening of the way is here not, as at Isa 26:7, conceived of as the setting aside of the hindrances in the way of him who walks, but generally as making walking in the way possible: man can take no step in any direction without God; and that not only does not exempt him from moral responsibility, but the consciousness of this is rather for the first time rightly quickened by the consciousness of being encompassed on every side by the knowledge and the power of God. The dissuasion of Pro 5:20 is thus in Pro 5:21 grounded in the fact, that man at every stage and step of his journey is observed and encompassed by God: it is impossible for him to escape from the knowledge of God or from dependence on Him. Thus opening all the paths of man, He has also appointed to the way of sin the punishment with which it corrects itself: "his sins lay hold of him, the evil-doer." The suffix יו does not refer to אישׁ of Pro 5:21, where every one without exception and without distinction is meant, but it relates to the obj. following, the evil-doer, namely, as the explanatory permutative annexed to the "him" according to the scheme, Exo 2:6; the permutative is distinguished from the apposition by this, that the latter is a forethought explanation which heightens the understanding of the subject, while the former is an explanation afterwards brought in which guards against a misunderstanding. The same construction, Pro 14:13, belonging to the syntaxis ornata in the old Hebrew, has become common in the Aramaic and in the modern Hebrew. Instead of ילכּדוּהוּ (Pro 5:22), the poet uses poetically ילכּדנו; the interposed נ may belong to the emphatic ground-form ילכּדוּן, but is epenthetic if one compares forms such as קבנו (R. קב), Num 23:13 (cf. p. 73). The חמּאתו governed by חבלי, laquei (חבלי, tormina), is either gen. exeg.: bands which consist in his sin, or gen. subj.: bands which his sin unites, or better, gen. possess.: bands which his sin brings with it. By these bands he will be held fast, and so will die: he (הוּא referring to the person described) will die in insubordination (Symm. δι ̓ ἀπαιδευσίαν), or better, since אין and רב are placed in contrast: in want of correction. With the ישׁגּה (Pro 5:23), repeated purposely from Pro 5:20, there is connected the idea of the overthrow which is certain to overtake the infatuated man. In Pro 5:20 the sense of moral error began already to connect itself with this verb. אוּלת is the right name of unrestrained lust of the flesh. אולת is connected with אוּל, the belly; אול, Arab. âl, to draw together, to condense, to thicken (Isaiah, p. 424). Dummheit (stupidity) and the Old-Norse dumba, darkness, are in their roots related to each other. Also in the Semitic the words for blackness and darkness are derived from roots meaning condensation. אויל is the mind made thick, darkened, and become like crude matter. Next: Proverbs Chapter 6