Proverbs 5:17-23: in context

Proverbs 5 is a father's frank warning to his son about sexual faithfulness, and this passage is its positive heart. What stands out is that it does not argue for fidelity mainly by threat or restraint. It argues for it by delight. Rejoice in the wife of your youth, it says, let her love satisfy you at all times, be captivated always by her, be enthralled with her love. The counsel is not grit your teeth and resist the other woman. It is be so taken with your own that you have no room to wander.

That is a different strategy than most people use against temptation. We tend to fight a craving for what we do not have by sheer willpower, holding the line against it. Proverbs points the other direction entirely: the guard against wanting what is not yours is renewed delight in what is. Keep your springs for yourself alone, it says, and find your captivation at home. Then it adds the sober weight underneath. The ways of a man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he examines all his paths. There is no hidden road, no route God is not watching. And the person who ignores this gets caught in the cords of his own sin, tangled in ropes he wove himself, dying for lack of discipline.

The picture is that faithfulness is fed more by gratitude than by resistance, by being taken with what you already have. Where have I been trying to white-knuckle my way past a craving for what is not mine, when the real cure was to rekindle my delight in what already is?