Proverbs 9:17

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(17) Stolen waters are sweet.—See above, on Proverbs 5:15.

Bread eaten in secret.—The same figure is used in Proverbs 30:20.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

9:13-18 How diligent the tempter is, to seduce unwary souls into sin! Carnal, sensual pleasure, stupifies conscience, and puts out the sparks of conviction. This tempter has no solid reason to offer; and where she gets dominion in a soul, all knowledge of holy things is lost and forgotten. She is very violent and pressing. We need to seek and pray for true wisdom, for Satan has many ways to withdraw our souls from Christ. Not only worldly lusts and abandoned seducers prove fatal to the souls of men; but false teachers, with doctrines that flatter pride and give liberty to lusts, destroy thousands. They especially draw off such as have received only partial serious impressions. The depths of Satan are depths of hell; and sin, without remorse, is ruin, ruin without remedy. Solomon shows the hook; those that believe him, will not meddle with the bait. Behold the wretched, empty, unsatisfying, deceitful, and stolen pleasure sin proposes; and may our souls be so desirous of the everlasting enjoyment of Christ, that on earth we may live to him, daily, by faith, and ere long be with him in glory.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The besetting sin of all times and countries, the one great proof of the inherent corruption of man's nature. Pleasures are attractive because they are forbidden (compare Romans 7:7).

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

17. The language of a proverb, meaning that forbidden delights are sweet and pleasant, as fruits of risk and danger.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Stolen waters; by which he understandeth, either,

1. Idolatry, or other wickednesses, which in Solomon’s time before his fall were publicly forbidden and punished, but privately practised; or rather,

2. Adultery.

Are sweet; partly, from the difficulty of obtaining them; partly, from the art which men use in contriving such secret sins; and partly, because the very prohibition renders it more grateful to corrupt nature.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Stolen waters are sweet,.... Wells and fountains of waters in those hot countries were very valuable, and were the property of particular persons; about which there were sometimes great strife and contention; and they were sometimes sealed and kept from the use of others; see Genesis 26:18; now waters got by stealth from such wells and fountains were sweeter than their own, or what might be had in common and without difficulty, to which the proverb alludes. By which in general is meant, that all prohibited unlawful lusts and pleasures are desirable to men, and sweet in the enjoyment of them; and the pleasure promised by them is what makes them so desirable, and the more so because forbidden: and particularly as adultery, which is a sort of theft (r), and a drinking water out of another's cistern, Proverbs 5:15; being forbidden and unlawful, and secretly committed, is sweeter to an unclean person than a lawful enjoyment of his own wife; so false worship, superstition, and idolatry, the inventions of men, and obedience to their commands, which are no other than spiritual adultery, are more grateful and pleasing to a corrupt mind than the true and pure worship of God;

and bread eaten in secret is pleasant; or, "bread of secret places" (s); hidden bread, as the Targum, Vulgate Latin, and Syriac versions; that which is stolen and is another's (t), and is taken and hid in secret places, fetched out from thence, or eaten there: the sweet morsel of sin, rolled in the mouth, and kept under the tongue; secret lusts, private sins, particularly idolatry, to which men are secretly enticed, and which they privately commit, Deuteronomy 13:6; the same thing is designed by this clause as the forager.

(r) "Furtiva Verus", Ovid de Arte Amandi, l. 1. "Furta Jovis, furtiva munuscula", Catullus ad Mantium, Ephesians 66. v. 140, 145. So Propertius, l. 2. eleg. 30. v. 28. Pindar; for which he was indebted to Solomon, according to Clemens of Alexandria, Paedagog. l. 3. p. 252. (s) "latebraram", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Michaelis. (t) "Quas habeat veneres aliens pecunia nescis", Juvenal. Satyr. 13.

Geneva Study Bible

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

17. stolen waters] Maurer compares what he calls “tristissimum illud Ovidii,”

“Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata.”

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 17. - This is what she says: Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. The metaphor of "stolen waters" refers primarily to adulterous intercourse, as to "drink waters out of one's own cistern" (Proverbs 5:15, where see note) signifies the chaste connection of lawful wedlock. Wisdom offered flesh and wine to her guests; Folly offers bread and water. Wisdom invites openly to a well furnished table; Folly calls to a secret meal of barest victuals. What the former offers is rich and satisfying and comforting; what Vice gives is poor and mean and insipid. Yet this latter has the charm of being forbidden; it is attractive because it is unlawful. This is a trait of corrupt human nature, which is recognized universally. Thus Ovid, 'Amor.,' 3:4, 17 -

"Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata;
Sic interdictis imminet aeger aquis.' Things easily attained, the possession of which is gotten without effort or danger or breach of restraint, soon pall and cease to charm. To some minds the astuteness and secrecy required for success have an irresistible attraction. Thus St. Augustine relates ('Conf.,' 2:4) how he and some companions committed a theft, not from want and poverty, nor even from the wish to enjoy what was stolen, but simply for the pleasure of thieving and the sin. They robbed a pear tree by night, carried off great loads, which they flung to the pigs, and their only satisfaction was that they were doing what they ought not ("dum tamen fieret a nobis, quod eo liberet quo non liceret"). Septuagint, "Taste ye to your pleasure secret bread, and sweet water of theft." Where water is a precious commodity, as in many pets of Palestine, doubtless thefts were often committed, and persons made free with their neighbor's tank when they could do so undetected, thus sparing their own resources and felicitating themselves on their cleverness. On the metaphorical use of "waters" in Holy Scripture, St. Gregory says, "Waters are sometimes wont to denote the Holy Spirit, sometimes sacred knowledge, sometimes calamity, sometimes drifting peoples, sometimes the minds of those following the faith." He refers to these texts respectively: John 7:38, etc.; Ecclus. 15:3; Psalm 69:1; Revelation 17:15 ("the waters are peoples"); Isaiah 22:20; and he adds, "By water likewise bad knowledge is wont to be designated, as when the woman in Solomon, who bears the type of heresy, charms with crafty persuasion, saying, 'Stolen waters are sweet'" ('Moral.,' 19:9). Proverbs 9:17

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The woman, who in her own person serves as a sign to her house, addresses those who pass by in their innocence (לתמּם, 2 Samuel 15:11):

16 "Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither!"

     And if any one is devoid of understanding, she saith to him:

17 "Stolen waters taste sweet,

     And the bread of secrecy is pleasant."

פּתי (folly, simplicity) has a side accessible to good and its contrary: Wisdom is connected with the one side, and Folly with the other. And as the חסר־לב offers a vacuum to Wisdom which may perhaps be filled with the right contents, so is this vacuum welcome to Folly, because it meets there no resistance. In this sense, Proverbs 9:16 is like Proverbs 9:4 (excepting the addition of a connecting and of a concluding ו: et si quis excors, tum dicit ei); the word is the same in both, but the meaning, according to the two speakers, is different. That to which they both invite is the pleasure of her fellowship, under the symbol of eating and drinking; in the one case it is intellectual and spiritual enjoyment, in the other sensual. That Wisdom offers (Proverbs 9:5) bread and wine, and Folly water and bread, has its reason in this, that the particular pleasure to which the latter invites is of a sensual kind; for to drink water out of his own or out of another fountain is (Proverbs 3:15-20) the symbol of intercourse in married life, or of intercourse between the unmarried, particularly of adulterous intercourse. מים גּנוּבים (correct texts have it thus, without the Makkeph) is sexual intercourse which is stolen from him who has a right thereto, thus carnal intercourse with אושׁת אישׁ; and לחם סתרים fleshly lust, which, because it is contrary to the law, must seek (cf. furtum, secret love intrigue) concealment (סתרים, extensive plur., as מעמקּים; Bttcher, 694). Just such pleasure, after which one wipes his mouth as if he had done nothing (Proverbs 30:20), is for men who are without wisdom sweet (מתק, Job 20:12) and pleasant; the prohibition of it gives to such pleasure attraction, and the secrecy adds seasoning; and just such enjoyments the כסילות, personified carnality, offers. But woe to him who, befooled, enters her house!