Jesus administered corporal punishment with a whip: Christ expulses the money changers out of the temple (1610), by Cecco del Caravaggio (follower of the famous Caravaggio; fl. 1610-1620s) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]
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Today it is quite fashionable and chic to commit the “throw the baby out with the bathwater” fallacy and to believe that every form of disciplinary spanking is child-beating: as if a little swat on a butt is the same as a punch in the mouth, slap on the face, etc. That’s self-evidently absurd, and requires no rational argument to overthrow, but it is widespread, because many people approach this issue from an emotional perspective only, while discarding the necessity for rational analysis.
One of the things that vehement opponents of spanking overlook is clear biblical evidence in favor of it:
Proverbs 13:24 (RSV) He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
Proverbs 22:15 Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.
Proverbs 23:13-14 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. [14] If you beat him with the rod you will save his life from Sheol. (cf. Heb 12:5-11; Eph 6:14)
Proverbs 29:15 The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.
Some argue that these passages are not to be taken literally, and/or that to do so is merely “fundamentalism.” But there are, of course, many literal passages in Holy Scripture (if not the vast majority). The trick is to know which ones are literal and which aren’t. The error of fundamentalism is to take things literally when they weren’t intended (by the standard rules of literary and biblical interpretation, or hermeneutics), to be such.
The Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament is one of the most revered works of this sort: written by two German Lutheran scholars and Hebraists. Assuredly, they understand Hebrew literary genres and when a passage is intended to be literal or not. Franz Delitzsch converted from Judaism to Lutheranism at age 19 in 1832. According to their commentary, these passages are quite literal:
Proverbs 23:14 commentary: “. . . he who administers corporal chastisement to the child, saves him spiritually . . .” [my emphasis]
Proverbs 29:15 commentary: “. . . discipline by means of words, which must accompany bodily discipline, and without them is also necessary . . .” [my emphasis]
Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures concurs as to the Hebrew word for rod in all four of the passages above: shebet (Strong’s word #7626):
. . . a staff, stick, rod . . . (1) used for beating or striking, Isa. 10:15; 14:5; and chastening (virga), Prov. 10:13; 13:24; 22:8 . . .
A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, edited by Dom Bernard Orchard, 1953) is not some flaming fundamentalist commentary, either, but a respected Catholic work. It refers to the description in Proverbs 23:13-14 as “corporal punishment.”
Lest someone argue that all this is antiquated Old Testament / Hebrew teaching that doesn’t apply to us today, I would note three things:
1) The Old Testament is just as inspired as the New Testament, and Christian theology developed from it. Spanking is not an element of Jewish law (Mosaic Law) that Christians aren’t bound to.
2) The New Testament alludes to very similar ideas in its comparisons of a father’s discipline of his children to God’s discipline (Hebrews 12:5-11).
3) We also see Jesus Himself administering corporal punishment to the moneychangers at the temple:
John 2:14-15 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. [15] And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.
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