He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.
The child wisely chastened
Under this apparent severity is to be found the spirit of true kindness. It would seem as if the last word in the text were an emphatic word. There is a good deal of chastening, but it is not timely; the will has grown strong, the passions have acquired tenacious hold upon the mind, the chastening comes too late in life. It is the easiest of all things to spare the rod; it enables family life to proceed with fluency; it avoids all controversy and all painful collision as between the elder and the younger. For a time this is beautiful, so much so that people commend the family as one characterised by great harmony and union; on the contrary, it ought to be reprobated. The child that is wisely chastened comes to love the very hand that used the rod. Children must be taught that all things are not theirs, that the world is a place for discipline, and that all life is valuable only in proportion as it has been refined and strengthened by patient endurance. Let no merely cruel man take encouragement from these words to use the rod without measure, and to use it merely for the sake of showing his animal strength. That is not the teaching of the passage. The chastening is to be with measure, is to be timely, is to have some proportion to the offence that is visited, and is to give more pain to the inflicter of the punishment than to its receiver. Great wisdom is required in the use of the rod. The rod has to be used upon every man sooner or later; we cannot escape chastisement: we must be made to feel that the world is not all ours, that there are rights and interests to be respected besides those which we ourselves claim: the sooner that lesson can be instilled into the mind the better; if it can be wrought into the heart and memory of childhood it will save innumerable anxieties and disappointments in all after-life. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The wise use of the rod
The rod is to be taken for correction or punishment in general, not specifically for corporal punishment.
1. The rod should be the last resource. The cases in which it is necessary to appeal to the rod are very rare.
2. When the rod is used, be quite sure that a fault has been committed. Children are sometimes severely chastened when they have committed no fault, and this produces a sense of injury and a loss of confidence, which cannot fail to exert evil influences.
3. Let there be a due proportion between the fault and the correction.
4. Never chastise in a passion.
5. Let chastisement be preceded by, or accompanied with, earnest efforts to convince the offender of his fault.
6. Accompany the correction with a system of encouragement. (R. Wardlaw.)
The use of the rod
Properly treated and fully expanded, this subject of “the stick” would cover all the races of man in all regions and all ages; indeed, it would hide every member of the human family. Attention could be drawn to the respect accorded in every chapter of the world’s history, sacred and profane, to the rabdos--to the fasces of the Roman lictors, which every schoolboy honours (often unconsciously) with an allusion when he says he will lick, or vows he won’t be licked--to the herald’s staff of Hermes, the caduceus of Mercury, the wand of AEsculapius, the rods of Moses, and the contending sorceress--to the mystic bundle of nine twigs, in honour of the nine muses, that Dr. Bushby loved to wield, and which many a simple English parent believes Solomon, in all his glory, recommended as an element in domestic jurisdiction--to the sacred wands of savage tribes, the staffs of our constables and sheriffs, the highly-polished gold sticks and black rods that hover about the ante-rooms of courts at St. James or Portsoken. The rule of thumb has been said to be the government of this world. And what is this thumb but a short stick, a sceptre emblematic of a sovereign authority which none dares to dispute? “The stick,” says the Egyptian proverb “came down from heaven.” (J. Cordy Jeaffreson.)