Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth. {As} a loving hind and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; be exhilarated always with her love (NASB).
Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. She is a loving doe, a graceful deer. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love (NLT).
After a series of warnings against the dangers of infidelity, the Sage encourages his son to lose himself in the delights of the marriage bed. His wife should be a source of constant delight and sensual gratification that is blessed--able to produce a sense of wellbeing (Keller). A husband rejoices (takes pleasure) in the relationship he experiences with the wife of his youth, implying monogamy, because they share an intimacy together that no other woman can provide.
The Sage then likens the wife to a graceful deer. It is hard for us to relate to literature that uses animal metaphors as referents to the marriage bed. Waltke says, "I had difficulty identifying with that culture and imagery until on one occasion, high up on Tel Hesi, I came into close contact with mountain goats and observed their bright, black eyes, their graceful limbs, and their irresistible silky hair." The most beautiful aspects of Yahweh's creation are seen in the one who completes us. Not only is the faithful husband captivated by his love's appearance, but also a metaphorical draught from the elixir of his wife’s breasts quenches a husband’s thirst for sexual gratification. He is literally intoxicated (swerve, meander, staggered) by the lovemaking of the marriage bed.
So much for biblical literalists having a "dirty" opinion of sex, or positing that it only exists for the goal of procreation. Within the parameters of God's will, there is no place for greater pleasure giving and seeking than the marriage bed. Nor should the "male-centeredness" of this text imply a far-reaching chauvinism that denies the mutual satisfaction sought there. The New Testament sexual ethic clearly delineates the bodies of both partners in a marriage relationship actually belong the one to the other. We live to serve our spouse, not to depersonalize, make sex objects of, and get satisaction from them. A relationship that grows deeper spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, produces the fruit of mutual enjoyment in the physical union of marriage.
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