Does the Bible Really Say You Should Beat Your Children?

The Book of Proverbs, a work of wisdom literature that is included in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (i.e., what Christians call the “Old Testament”), contains several verses that explicitly tell parents that they should punish their children for their misbehavior by beating them with a wooden rod. Some amateur hermeneuticists have tried to explain away these verses by inventing some rather ingenious new interpretations for them, but, philologically speaking, these interpretations all fall flat. The Book of Proverbs very clearly supports beating children.

Just because these verses advise parents to beat their children, though, does not mean that Jewish and Christian parents today who regard the Book of Proverbs as scripture should beat their children. It is important to consider the historical and cultural context in which the Book of Proverbs was written and recognize that that context was very different from the context that exists in the world today.

Background on the Book of Proverbs

A proverb is a short, traditional saying that is believed to convey some form of truth or lesson. Collections of traditional sayings and proverbs were a very widespread genre of literature in the ancient Near East. Such collections are known to have existed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant. For those who may be interested, the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) has transliterations and translations of over two dozen ancient Sumerian proverb collections dating to as early as the third millennium BCE that are available for free on their website for anyone who wants to access them.

The Book of Proverbs is a product of this wider genre of ancient Near Eastern proverb collections. Strictly speaking, it is not really a single work, but rather an anthology of eight discrete collections of proverbs that were evidently in use among speakers of the Hebrew language in the first millennium BCE.

Each of these eight collections is of a different date and origin and each one is attributed in the text to a different person or group of people. These attributions most likely reflect ancient traditions about the authorship of the collections, but they should not necessarily be taken as reflecting the historical reality of who actually compiled them.

For instance, the first collection of sayings included in the work (spanning chapters 1–9) bears the attribution “Proverbs of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel.” This has often been taken to mean that the collection was written by King Solomon of Israel himself, who is traditionally said to have ruled from 970 until 931 BCE. In reality, though, the collection was most likely written quite late, during the Achaemenid Period (lasted c. 539 – c. 332 BCE) or even the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 30 BCE).

ABOVE: Medieval manuscript illustration by the artist Ingobertus dating to c. 880 CE, depicting the court of King Solomon, to whom the first collection in the Book of Proverbs is traditionally attributed

The verses in question and their interpretation

The Book of Proverbs contains several notable verses advocating corporal punishment on children who have misbehaved. The most famous such verse is probably Proverbs 13:24, which reads as follows (as translated in the NRSV):

“Those who spare the rod hate their children,
but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.”

There are, however, other examples of verses in the text advocating corporal punishment, such as Proverbs 22:15, which reads as follows (as translated in the NRSV):

“Folly is bound up in the heart of a boy,
but the rod of discipline drives it far away.”

Here is Proverbs 23:13–14 (as translated in the NRSV):

“Do not withhold discipline from your children;
if you beat them with a rod, they will not die.
If you beat them with the rod,
you will save their lives from Sheol [i.e., the underworld].”

And here is Proverbs 29:15 (as translated in the NRSV):

“The rod and reproof give wisdom,
but a mother is disgraced by a neglected child.”

The Hebrew word that is translated as “rod” in all of these verses is שֵׁבֶט (šēbeṭ). Many interpreters have tried to claim that this word refers to a shepherd’s rod that is used to gently guide the sheep in the direction the shepherd wants them to go. These interpreters therefore maintain that the Book of Proverbs is not saying that parents should beat their children, but rather that parents should guide their children with moral instruction.

It is true that the word šēbeṭ can refer to a shepherd’s staff in some contexts, but that is emphatically not how the word is used in any of the verses cited above. In all the verses used above, the word šēbeṭ refers to a wooden rod that is used to beat someone across the back as a form as corporal punishment.

This is most abundantly clear in Proverbs 23:13–14, where the word is used with the verb “תַכֶּ֥נּוּ” (ṯak-ken-nū), a form of the verb נָכָה (nākāh), which can only mean “to beat” or “hit.” There is simply no reasonable way to construe this verse other than as a direction to beat children.

The word šēbeṭ is used a total of eight times in the Book of Proverbs and, every time it is used in Proverbs, even when it is not in the context of talking about children, it is clearly used in reference to corporal punishment. For instance, Proverbs 26:3 reads as follows (as translated in the NRSV):

“A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey,
and a rod [šēbeṭ] for the back of fools.”

Notice what the first two items on the list have in common; both are tools that are used for imposing corporal punishment. The inclusion of the šēbeṭ on this list only makes sense if the šēbeṭ in question is also a tool for imposing corporal punishment.

On top of this, the specific reference to a fool’s “back” only makes sense if we interpret the šēbeṭ as a rod that is used to beat the fool’s back. If the šēbeṭ were simply a shepherd’s staff meant to guide the fool gently in the right direction, it would not make much sense to specify that his “back” is the part of his body that is receiving this guidance.

ABOVE: Copper engraving by the Dutch artist Jan Luyken (lived 1649 – 1712), printed in 1685 in the book Martyrs Mirror, showing a woman who has been hogtied and is being beaten with bundles of birch rods

The importance of remembering the historical and cultural context

As I believe I have shown, all the verses I have cited above are indeed to telling parents that they should corporally punish their children when they misbehave by beating them with a wooden rod. This does not, however, mean that parents today should beat their children.

I am personally an agnostic, so, for me, the interpretation of these verses is simply a matter of academic understanding. If, however, you are a Jew or a Christian and you consider the Book of Proverbs a work of authoritative scripture, it is important to remember that, although it may contain valuable lessons and insights that are relevant to the present day, it is a simplistic and wrongheaded approach to simply open any book of the Bible and assume that every word on the page is immediately relevant and applicable to one’s own life situations in the present day.

What I’m trying to say here is that context matters—and, by this, I don’t just mean context within the text, but also the historical and cultural context in which the text itself was produced. Even if we assume that God really inspired the writing of the Book of Proverbs, it was still produced well over two thousand years ago in a specific ancient historical and cultural context for a specific ancient Hebrew-language-speaking audience.

It is hard to deny that some statements in the works that are now included in the Bible are not directly relevant to life situations in the present day. For instance, Proverbs 31:10–31 is a description of what the author of the passage believed an ideal wife was supposed to be like and how they believed she was supposed to behave. The description is very much in line with ancient Near Eastern standards and social norms at the time when the text was written.

Women in the ancient Near East at the time were generally expected to manufacture all the clothes for all the members of their respective households. Unsurprisingly, then, the description of the ideal wife in Proverbs 31:10–31 says that she should manufacture all the clothes for all the members of her household using the equipment that was standard at the time.

Proverbs 31:13 says (as translated in the NRSV):

“She seeks wool and flax,
and works with willing hands.”

Later, Proverbs 31:19 says (as translated in the NRSV):

“She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her hands hold the spindle.”

Finally, Proverbs 31:21–22 says (as translated in the NRSV):

“She is not afraid for her household when it snows,
for all her household are clothed in crimson.
She makes herself coverings;
her clothing is fine linen and purple.”

Today, there is no need for the women of a household to manufacture clothing for the members of the household, since people can simply buy clothes for themselves much more conveniently and at a much more affordable price than it would cost for them to make their own clothes. Moreover, there is no need for women to manually spin fibers into string using spindles and distaffs and weave that string into fabric, since there are machines that can spin and weave fabric much more quickly, cheaply, and efficiently.

In other words, the passages in Proverbs that describe the ideal wife as manufacturing clothes for her whole family from scratch and by hand using spindles and distaffs are clearly outdated. These passages were written for an audience long ago and do not directly apply today, given the society we live in and the technology that currently exists.

ABOVE: Kilikian basalt stele dating to between c. 825 and c. 700 BCE, currently held in the Adana Archaeology Museum in Turkey, depicting a woman spinning fibers into string using a distaff and a spindle while a boy (possibly her son) stands nearby holding a writing tablet and stylus

Corporal punishment in the ancient Near East

Throughout the ancient Near East during the period when the proverb collections that now make up the Book of Proverbs were compiled, corporal punishment was widely accepted as the standard method of disciplining misbehavior in general.

The Old Babylonian king Hammurabi (ruled c. 1792 – c. 1750 BCE) famously promulgated a law code known as the “Code of Hammurabi,” which made the standard punishments for many, if not most, major crimes corporal in nature. Subsequent ancient Near Eastern law codes generally followed the precedent established by Hammurabi.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the relief carving at the top of the Code of Hammurabi stele, now held in the Louvre Museum in Paris, depicting the Babylonian sun-god Shamash seated on his throne presenting Hammurabi with his insignia

Slavery was also a nigh-ubiquitous practice throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. It was extremely common for masters to punish the people they enslaved for their alleged “misbehavior” by physically beating them, forcibly starving them, branding them, and torturing them in all sorts of other cruel and violent ways. (I talk more about the brutality of slavery in ancient Greece in particular in this post I wrote in August 2020. Much of what I say in that post is also applicable to other cultures of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.)

In this historical and cultural environment, it should come as little surprise that corporal punishment was widely accepted as the standard method of controlling children’s behavior. Make no mistake: beating children has always been morally heinous—just like how enslaving people and beating them for “misbehavior” has always been morally heinous—but, in ancient times, it was widely seen as normal and acceptable.

ABOVE: Wall painting from an Egyptian tomb dating to the fifteenth century BCE depicting a master beating an enslaved man with a rod in a manner very similar to how the Book of Proverbs recommends parents should beat their children

The historical and cultural context today in the twenty-first century

The situation in the present day is very different from the situation that existed in the ancient Near East over two thousand years ago. Today, scientific studies have repeatedly found that corporal punishment on children is both ineffective and harmful. The American Psychological Association (APA) summarizes the findings of a major meta-analysis conducted by Elizabeth Gershoff examining eighty-eight different studies on corporal punishment, which cover sixty-three years of data, in this article from 2002 and this article from 2012.

According to the APA’s summary of Gershoff’s meta-analysis, modern psychological studies over the course of the past century or so have repeatedly found that, while physically beating children can result in more compliant behavior in the short term, it is not an effective method of encouraging desired behaviors or discouraging undesired behaviors in a child in the long term. The earlier article I cited (the one from 2002) explains this, stating:

“For one, corporal punishment on its own does not teach children right from wrong. Secondly, although it makes children afraid to disobey when parents are present, when parents are not present to administer the punishment those same children will misbehave.”

Both APA articles note that, according to Gershoff’s meta-analysis, studies have found that physically beating children is closely correlated with increased likelihood of physical injury, mental health problems, aggression, and antisocial behavior.

If one wishes to apply the spirit of verses like Proverbs 13:24, 22:15, 23:13–14, and 29:15 to the present day, the spirit of all these sayings is that a parent should not neglect to teach their child proper morals. There is no more reason to think that the specific method of teaching children proper morals that is referenced in the text should need to be implemented today than there is reason to think that women today should be forced to manufacture all the clothes for their families personally from scratch and by hand using spindles and distaffs.