The Message Bible MSG
New International Version NIV
15 Do you know the saying, "Drink from your own rain barrel, draw water from your own spring-fed well"?
15
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.
16 It's true. Otherwise, you may one day come home and find your barrel empty and your well polluted.
16
Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
17 Your spring water is for you and you only, not to be passed around among strangers.
17
Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.
18 Bless your fresh-flowing fountain! Enjoy the wife you married as a young man!
18
May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose - don't ever quit taking delight in her body. Never take her love for granted!
19
A loving doe, a graceful deer— may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
20 Why would you trade enduring intimacies for cheap thrills with a whore? for dalliance with a promiscuous stranger?
20
Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife? Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.
Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide.