Proverbs 5:18
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Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
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Fathering children with a wife is a glorious and wonderful thing! Solomon warned his son against adultery by praising the privilege and pleasure of a legitimate family (5:16-18). The fountain is a man's generative power with a woman, which he limited to his son's wife; and he exalted a happy family as a blessing and delight worthy of rejoicing.
Adultery destroys this good thing. Whores cannot give it. They avoid conception, lest they be discovered. When a child is born out of wedlock, it causes more problems than blessings. And adultery crushes the heart of your wife. It is only legitimate children from a monogamous marriage that bring blessing and joy to two loving parents. Solomon condemned adultery by promoting a legitimate family. See the comments on 5:16.
Boys should be taught early that marrying young - the wife of thy youth - and having a large, happy family are their great sexual and social goals. Girls should believe being a wife and mother are their most fulfilling and noble purposes. Childbirth, a nursing mother, and happy children are blessings (17:6; Job 21:11; 42:16; Ps 107:41; 127:3-5; 128:1-6). And they are also great antidotes to the short, deadly pleasure that whores offer.
Our perverse society despises and ridicules the large families of several generations ago. Family size in America has fallen from an average of 7.0 children in 1800 to 3.5 in 1900 to 1.6 in 2000. This collapse is partly due to the change from an agrarian/rural society to a service/urban one; but it also reflects the selfish and whorish lifestyles of most adults.
Defying the beauty and pleasure of a large family, our lascivious generation promotes a lifestyle of casual sex, multiple partners, commitment-free love, professional women, marriage without children, and spousal independence. The family unit God ordained and blessed, which was for man's pleasure and prosperity, has become an item of scorn.
Divorce, single parenting, cohabitation, and same-sex marriages are in! Many children are raised in one-parent homes. When there are two, the one child is spoiled beyond belief. These children's dysfunctional lives condemn the trends of our evil generation.
The righteous, who fear God and trust His Word, must restore the glory and prosperity of the family - a man and wife committed for life, loving their several or more children, and rejoicing in their extension by grandchildren! You can do this by building your own marriage and family to be an example of blessing and pleasure, by condemning and avoiding all forms of casual sex outside marriage, by teaching your children these things, and by reproving and ridiculing all societal trends against God's family ordinances.
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