Proverbs 5:18
Hebrew Bible
16 Should your springs be dispersed outside, your streams of water in the wide plazas? 17 Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. 18 May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife you married in your youth— 19 a loving doe, a graceful deer; may her breasts satisfy you at all times may you be captivated by her love always. 20 But why should you be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, and embrace the bosom of a different woman?
Date: 6th-3rd Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Malachi 2:15
Hebrew Bible
13 You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you. 14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. 15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. What did our ancestor do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. 16 “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.” 17 You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” Because you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the Lord’s opinion, and he delights in them,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In Proverbs 5:18 and Malachi 2:14, the “wife of one’s youth” describes a spouse to whom a man should be intimately committed. Conversely, Proverbs 2:17 rebukes the immoral woman who abandons the partner of her youth. The deserted spouse of one’s youth is thereby regarded as the innocent party. The description of the forsaken wife in Isaiah 54:6-8 also alludes to Lamentations 5. The words reused in Isaiah 54:6-8 are indicated in Lamentations 5:20-22 ... The appearance of this unique cluster of words in practically the same order shows that DI again alludes to Lamentations 5:20-22. Also, the theme of these two texts concerns YHWH abandoning the people / Zion in anger during the exile. However, in Lamentations 5, the abandoned people admit their culpability (Lamentations 5:7, 16), while Zion is portrayed by Deutero-Isaiah simply as the abandoned and possibly wronged wife of YHWH’s youth ..."
Low, Maggie
Mother Zion in Deutero-Isaiah: A Metaphor for Zion Theology
(p. 104) Peter Lang Publishing, 2013
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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