Proverbs 25:26 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And a corrupt spring— See the note on 2 Chronicles 32:4. Besides the methods of stopping up wells and breaking down cisterns there mentioned, the eastern people sometimes practised another way to deprive their enemies of the use of their waters; namely, by throwing into them such filth as rendered them not drinkable. This was done in particular by the people of a place called Bosseret. Accident also has sometimes, after much the same manner, made them unfit for drinking: so, in the description of the expedition of Baldwin III. against the same town, we are told that his army underwent very great thirst at that time; for, going through the country of Trachonitis, which hath no fountains, only cisterns of rain-water, it happened that at the time he passed through it, these cisterns were rendered useless by means of the locusts which had a little before swarmed to an uncommon degree, and, dying, had occasioned such putrefaction in their waters, as to render the drinking them insupportable. It is not impossible that the corrupt spring which Solomon here alludes to, and to which he compares a righteous man slain by a wicked one, whose promised usefulness was by that means cut off, might intend a receptacle of water, made useless after this manner; though it must be allowed that the corrupting a rill of water by making it muddy, is as natural an interpretation. See Observations, p. 340.