To Spare the Rod

He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

-- Proverbs 13: 24 (KJV)

Most biblical proverbs go something like this: "A faithful witness will not lie: but a false witness will utter lies" (14: 5). In other words, they're hard to argue with. But this one is different, especially in this age of competing child-rearing philosophies.

In point of fact, while the Bible is high on having children, it doesn't have much to say about the proper way to raise them. This verse is about all we get, and it advocates periodic "chastening" (beating) with a rod. The author liked the idea so much he repeated it ten chapters later: "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" (23: 13–14). Of course, these were the days when you might be put to death for striking a parent [see Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth], so you might take the Bible's advice with a grain of salt.

Shakespeare, however, seems to endorse Proverbs' sentiment when he has Duke Vincentio, in Measure for Measure (1604), call for strict enforcement of the law: if authorities merely brandish laws as threats -- as "fond [doting] fathers" might stick bundles of twigs in their children's faces, "For terror, not to use" -- then "in time the rod / Becomes more mock'd than fear'd" (Act 1, scene 3). Later poets, such as Samuel Butler, were less serious. In the satiric Hudibras (1663–1678), Butler jokes that if, as poets would have it, "Love is a boy," then we ought to "spare the rod, and spoil the child."

Butler's paraphrase is now more famous than the original, but the irony has been bled out of it, so there isn't much difference in meaning between the two. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" is certainly less harsh than Proverbs' talk of death and hell, but tell that to a schoolboy who's just been whipped.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!