Proverbs 5:15 tells you to find your satisfaction within your own committed relationships rather than seeking it elsewhere. The image is of drinking from your own well, which means enjoying what is rightfully and reliably yours. The verse is spoken by a father to his son in the opening chapters of Proverbs, a teacher passing wisdom from one generation to the next.
Drink water out of your own cistern, running water out of your own well.
Proverbs 5:15 (WEB)
What Proverbs 5:15 Means
The verse uses the picture of a cistern and a well, both sources of water that a household depends on. A cistern collects and stores rainwater, and a well reaches down to a spring. Both are private, dug and maintained by the family that owns them. The father is saying that the water you need is found close to home, in what you have been given to care for.
The phrase “running water” stresses freshness and abundance. Stored water can go stale, but a well that is kept clean keeps giving. The point is that a faithful marriage can remain vital and refreshing over decades, but only when you keep returning to it and tending it rather than looking for a new source.
The verse does not promise that every marriage will feel exciting at every moment, and it does not offer a formula for happiness. It describes a posture of wisdom: drink from what is yours, and find your sufficiency there.
The Context of Proverbs 5:15
The book of Proverbs is a collection of sayings meant to teach young people how to live wisely before God. Much of it is traditionally attributed to Solomon, and chapters 1 to 9 are framed as a father speaking to a son. Chapter 5 warns against the seductive “strange woman,” a figure who represents the lure of adultery and the ruin it brings. The surrounding verses describe the regret of the man who ignored instruction and ended up in disgrace.
Read in that setting, verse 15 is the positive counterpart to the warning. Just before it, the father describes how the young man will one day groan in regret if he ignores wisdom. Just after, he urges him to let his spring be blessed and to rejoice in the wife of his youth. The verse therefore reads as an invitation to faithful love rather than only a prohibition.
Key Phrases in Proverbs 5:15
Ecclesiastes 9:9
Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your life of vanity, which he has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity: for that is your portion in life, and in your labor in which you labor under the sun.
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This verse encourages you to enjoy life with the spouse God has given you, all the days of your life. It echoes the same theme of finding joy within the marriage God has provided rather than looking elsewhere.
Hebrews 13:4
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled: but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.
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This verse affirms that marriage is to be honored by all and that the marriage bed is kept pure. It reinforces the faithfulness that Proverbs 5:15 presents as the foundation of lasting contentment.
A Short Prayer From Proverbs 5:15
Father, you know the places in my heart where I grow restless and begin to look for satisfaction somewhere other than in what you have given me. Help me to tend the relationships you have entrusted to me with patience, honesty and care. Where I have neglected my well, forgive me, and teach me to draw from it with gratitude. Keep my heart steady and faithful, and let the water you provide refresh me each day. Amen.
