Proverbs 5:18

May your fountain be blessed, ¹  and may you rejoice ²  in your young wife ³  –

May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.

Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice in the wife of your youth.

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth.

Bless your fresh-flowing fountain! Enjoy the wife you married as a young man!

Let blessing be on your fountain; have joy in the wife of your early years.

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth.

May your fountain be blessed, ¹  and may you rejoice ²  in your young wife ³  –

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.”