Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.
Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee. Let thy children know thee alone as their parent, and do thou know them as the children of thyself, and not of strangers. The child of an adulteress or harlot, on the contrary, is the child of many fathers. Maurer, etc., understands "thy fountains" (Proverbs 5:16) of the wife, not of the children. Let thy wife be fruitful in giving birth to children. So here, Let thy wife be for thyself alone, and not common to thee with others. But the plural "fountains" seems to refer rather to the children, as the singular, "thy fountain" (Proverbs 5:18), to the wife.