FROM OUR OWN CISTERNS

Proverbs 5.15-20
FROM OUR OWN CISTERNS
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. (5.15)

THE CISTERN IS AN UNDERGROUND reservoir. In Palestine where rainfall is scarce, a pear-shaped well is dug into the ground. Water is collected from a subterranean spring and rain. Most homes in Jerusalem had private cisterns. As these reservoirs held the source of life, they were of extreme value.

Solomon compares the love between a man and his wife to such a life-giving treasure. He refers further to wells, springs and streams (v.15-16). Like cisterns, these are resources for life and living. They satisfy, refresh and delight. So also does conjugal love.

Contrary to the belief of some that sex is dirty, the Bible portrays sex within its rightful context of marriage as something beautiful. As physician, author and family counsellor, Dr Ed Wheat, titles one of his best-selling books, sex within marriage is "Intended For Pleasure." God designs man and woman in such a way that in marriage, they experience one of the sublimest joys known to humankind.

But this joy is an intensely personal one. It is enjoyed by two persons pledged to each other for as long as they live. In that sense, like the cistern, it is privately owned. It is exclusive. And because it is exclusive, it is special and deeply cherished by the couple. Unfortunately, and tragically, some sexually permissive societies have overturned the biblical ideal and sought to retail sex as a free-for-all product, or promote it as a spectator sport.

Where such a parody of sex has been purveyed, marriages have broken down, and divorce rates shot up. Homes are emptied of love and children suffer for the sins of their parents. And all because of a few moments of illicit pleasure from someone else's cistern! (See 7.6-27 for a graphic account of such folly.)

Adultery, or fornication — extra-marital, or pre-marital sex — is essentially an act of robbery. It begins with a spirit of covetousness, desiring what is not ours. Its leads to theft, taking what belongs to the person, or to his wife or her husband.

Of course, it affords pleasure for a while — that does not make it any less a crime in God's sight. Eventually, the thrill runs out and the consequences take over. It is not for nothing that a recent film has called such an escapade "Fatal Attraction."

From whose cistern am I drinking?