What is the truth about 'Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child"?
Almost inevitably, when parents, especially Christian parents insist a child needs to be punished, they often state something like, “Well the Bible says if you spare the rod you will spoil the child.” But what does that mean and what is the truth about that well-known saying?
First, this old idiom supposedly comes from the Bible.
Proverbs 23:13-14 in particular. What do we know about these verses? Let’s find out.
Check out the various translations of this verse:
Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell (KJV).
Do not hold back discipline from the child, although you strike him with the rod, he will not die. You shall strike him with the rod and rescue his soul from Sheol (NASB).
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death (NIV).
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol (ESV).
Don’t withhold discipline from young people. If you strike them with a rod they will not die. Strike them with a rod and you will extricate their lives from Sheol (Dr. Tremper Longman).
1. What is the context?
a. Proverbs 22:17-24:34 are a collection of the sayings of the wise. Research shows that the wise ones who collected the Old Testament book of Proverbs also included the sayings or proverbs of sages in other cultures that are in agreement with Old Testament truth. This verse is similar to Proverbs 13:24 (see above).
b. This passage is another observation of a general truth and not a command.
c. As already mentioned, in the Ancient Near East, including Israel, it was a common belief that teaching and wisdom had to be drummed into students and evil beaten out of them. Students could be seven to twelve years old but most were twelve to eighteen. Comparatively, Israel was much more lenient and gracious than other cultures and nations.
d. This was the practice found under God’s Law in the Old Testament.
2. Important terms to understand.
a. The word ben, which we have already seen is a generic term for progeny, is commonly translated as child. Just as a parent can refer to her grown daughter as her child or a father could refer to his infant boy as his child, so too child in and of itself does not tell us about the person. I’ve argued already that the purpose for Proverbs is to train older sons (na’ar) in God’s way, hence the most reasonable understanding for child has to do with older sons and not little children.
However, the English term, child in this verse is na’ar in Hebrew. This could be translated child but as Strong’s Concordance points out, the term is used in the Old Testament in various ways:
“young man 76, servant 54, child 44, lad 33, young 15, children 7, youth 6, babe 1, boys 1, young 1 time.
Context always matters. For further explanation, see this article.
b. We also see that discipline means chastisement, correction, chasten, or correction, and rarely does it mean punishment. For further discussion of what the Old Testament says about discipline, go here.
c. The word strike means to beat, hit, or give wounds. Remember, beating a student, son, slave, or criminal on the back until they were bruised was supposed to be a good thing.
d. Rod (shebet) could be a club, rod, staff, or symbolic scepter of authority. This verse obviously requires a literal instrument and is not something metaphorical.
e. Save is to deliver, rescue, recover, or snatch out of peril.
f. Sheol is the Hebrew word for “the place of the dead.” It could mean:
* A place of no return (literally or metaphorically). Hence the reference here could mean the grave.
* A place without the praise of God.
* Where the wicked are sent for punishment, similar to other ancient cultural views about the place of the dead. But the righteous are not sent or abandoned there.
* A place of exile. It could be the literal sense but most often used figuratively.
* Or the condition of a person “in the extreme degradation into sin.”
* The various uses in the Old Testament are not equated with what we know about Hell from the New Testament. The contexts sometimes inform us which definition of Sheol is meant but in its very basic sense, it means “the place of the dead.”
3. What is this saying?
In the Ancient Near Eastern cultures, including ancient Israel, the father-teacher had to beat the truth into youth (teens) in order to force them to learn their lessons. This was even a practice used up until the 1950s in Western societies and is still used in a variety of third-world cultures. The idea is that it was better to beat wisdom into the youth than for the youth to die. In the Old Testament, when the son is rebellious to the extent that he ought to receive corporal punishment, then it is incumbent on the father to administer that beating.
William Webb points out this Proverb is saying, “Spare the son from a premature death, the ultimate penalty: Stoning severely rebellious teens (Deut 21:18-21) who violated God’s Law.” So, it is far better to beat persistently rebellious youth than for them to violate a law that would require capital punishment.
This verse cannot mean it is imperative a father spank a child in order to save a child from going to Hell. No other biblical verse or doctrine supports this idea. Further, as believers in Christ know, there is only one way to be rescued from Hell and that is through Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross, paying the full price for one’s guilt and sins. Saving faith in Jesus’s life, work, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension (1 Corinthians 15) is what rescues people, not spanking or even a beating with a rod.
Second, the phrase, “spare the rod, spoil the child” is from an old poem.
It is from Hudibras, an old poem, not from the Bible. Here are a few articles to explain this:
Here are some additional resources to answer the question:
Hebrew Word Study on this verse
Spare the Rod - the Heart of the Matter
Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child - No! It’s Not in the Bible
You Wouldn’t Quote Spare the Rod if You Knew Where it Came From
What is the Source of This Phrase?
The truth is that “spare the rod and spoil the child” does not support spanking or beating a child.
Even though this old saying has been widely used for centuries to justify beating, smacking, spanking, or punishing a child it is not biblical. In fact, as we’ve seen, the Bible verses from which this phrase supposedly comes do not say this at all. We cannot justify punishing a child using this old phrase. Indeed, we have no grounds for punishing a child at all.
Further, this old saying comes from a 17th Century erotic poem and has nothing to do with disciplining or punishing children.