5:18 May your fountain be blessed, 1
and may you rejoice 2 in your young wife 3 –
5:19 a loving doe, 4 a graceful deer;
may her breasts satisfy you at all times,
may you be captivated 5 by her love always.
18:22 The one who finds 6 a wife finds what is enjoyable, 7
and receives a pleasurable gift 8 from the Lord. 9
19:14 A house and wealth are inherited from parents, 10
but a prudent wife 11 is from the Lord.
1 sn The positive instruction is now given: Find pleasure in a fulfilling marriage. The “fountain” is another in the series of implied comparisons with the sexual pleasure that must be fulfilled at home. That it should be blessed (the passive participle of בָּרַךְ, barakh) indicates that sexual delight is God-given; having it blessed would mean that it would be endowed with fruitfulness, that it would fulfill all that God intended it to do.
2 tn The form is a Qal imperative with a vav (ו) of sequence; after the jussive of the first half this colon could be given an equivalent translation or logically subordinated.
3 tn Or “in the wife you married when you were young” (cf. NCV, CEV); Heb “in the wife of your youth” (so NIV, NLT). The genitive functions as an attributive adjective: “young wife” or “youthful wife.” Another possibility is that it refers to the age in which a man married his wife: “the wife you married in your youth.”
4 tn The construct expression “a doe of loves” is an attributive genitive, describing the doe with the word “loves.” The plural noun may be an abstract plural of intensification (but this noun only occurs in the plural). The same construction follows with a “deer of grace” – a graceful deer.
5 sn The verb שָׁגָה (shagah) means “to swerve; to meander; to reel” as in drunkenness; it signifies a staggering gait expressing the ecstatic joy of a captivated lover. It may also mean “to be always intoxicated with her love” (cf. NRSV).
6 tn The verb מָצָא (matsa’, translated “finds”) is used twice in the first colon. It is paralleled by the verb פּוּק (puq, translated “receives”) in the second colon, which carries the same nuance as the preceding verbs. The first perfect tense verb might function in a hypothetical or conditional sense: “If a man finds…then he finds.” But taken as a principle the nuances of the verbs would be gnomic or characteristic.
7 tn Heb “good.” The term טוֹב (tov, “good; enjoyable; fortune”) might be an allusion to Gen 2:18, which affirms that it is not good for man to be alone. The word describes that which is pleasing to God, beneficial for life, and abundantly enjoyable.
8 tn Heb “what is pleasant.” The noun רָצוֹן (ratson, “what is pleasing”) is often interpreted in a religious-theological sense here: “receives favor from the
9 tc The LXX adds this embellishment to complete the thought: “Whoever puts away a good wife puts away good, and whoever keeps an adulteress is foolish and ungodly.”
10 tn Heb “inheritance of fathers” (so KJV, ASV, NASB).
11 sn This statement describes a wife who has a skillful use of knowledge and discretion that proves to be successful. This contrasts with the preceding verse. The proverb is not concerned about unhappy marriages or bad wives (both of which exist); it simply affirms that when a marriage works out well one should credit it as a gift from God.
12 tn Heb “and not one has done, and a remnant of the spirit to him.” The very elliptical nature of the statement suggests it is proverbial. The present translation represents an attempt to clarify the meaning of the statement (cf. NASB).
13 tn Heb “the one.” This is an oblique reference to Abraham who sought to obtain God’s blessing by circumventing God’s own plan for him by taking Hagar as wife (Gen 16:1-6). The result of this kind of intermarriage was, of course, disastrous (Gen 16:11-12).
14 sn The wife he took in his youth probably refers to the first wife one married (cf. NCV “the wife you married when you were young”).