Spare the Rod: The Heart of the Matter
That is a link to the full article which will be copy/pasted here as well, but at least this way you can know I am not making this stuff up.
One of the hot-button issues when it comes to discipline and children is, of course, spanking, and the more Christian and conservative the audience, the more hot the debate becomes. And yet there are no verses in the New Testament that support spanking, smacking, whipping, or otherwise hitting children.
There are New Testament verses that discourage women ever teaching outside a very narrow scope, but we'll save that for later.
There are no verses in the New Testament forbidding women from attention whoring themselves out through social media. That surely must mean that it's acceptable by God if there's no verses dealing with that explicit topic, right?
No, because the Bible isn't trying to address specific behaviors in every possible manifestation, but to deal with, as the article tries to imply, the "heart of the matter", the motivations behind behaviors which are considerably simpler and fewer in number than how those motivations can be acted out.
There won't be a verse for every action someone could take, but there is a verse for why someone would act at all.
In the Old Testament there are a total of five verses that have been interpreted to encourage, or even command, the use of physical punishment on children. All five of those verses are in the book of Proverbs. The word ‘proverb’ in the original Hebrew text is mashal and defined as a parable, prophetic and figurative discourse, symbolic poem, pithy maxim (i.e.a collection of wise metaphors and adages).
Jesus often spoke in parables, and that hasn't stopped anyone from taking what he taught seriously, let alone literally, for good or ill. The number of times I have seen the parable of "the good Samaritan" used to justify everything from foreign aide to welfare, whether such charities are what Jesus was commanding or not, is sufficient evidence that people have no problems with such abstract teachings, so long as they like what those teachings teach.
We don't get to choose what the Bible means to us, because it's not "our" text. It's God's text, and so there are going to be controversial things in it that we disagree with, but realize that we're then disagreeing with God.
That's all well and fine if you do not then turn around and try to declare that you are obedient to God when you are ignoring what God actually states. Such disloyalty is not endearing to God, or to those who can see the disparity.
Of interest is that ancient Hebrew had many words for children, each denoting a specific stage of childhood and many a specific gender:
yeled or yaldah – newborn boy or girl
yonek or yanak – nursling baby
olel – nursling baby who also eats food (translated ‘young child’ in Lamentations 4:4 KJV)
gamal – weaned child (around 3-4 years old)
taph – young child, one who still clings to their mother
elem or almah – firm and strong, older child
na’ar (masc.) or na’arah (fem.) – independent child, young adult child (includes older adolescents and young adults).
Let's see how well she did by cross-referencing with an actual concordance:
yeled - child, son, boy, youth
yaldah - girl, maiden
yonek - no concordance entry
yanaq - to suck
olel or olal - a child
gamal - to deal fully or adequately with, deal out to, wean, ripen
taph - children
elem - a young man
almah - a young woman, a virgin
naar - a boy, lad, youth, retainer
naarah - a girl, maiden
Now, I would recommend that you read the full entries because some of what she says is true, because she's ignoring the nature of the Hebrew language where they have a significantly smaller vocabulary so, while in English, words don't tend to have a variety of nuanced meanings, in Hebrew this is almost always the case, and you don't get a sense of that as an English reader or speaker unless you look at the concordance.
Further, the concordance entries are of the root word, not necessarily the rendering used in a particular verse, and this is how a smaller vocabulary makes up for itself, by being able to communicate connotation through how the root word is changed for the context. The root word will be modified, sometimes significantly, but it's not technically a new word, it's that same root word, but now with the added meaning from context that then attempts to deliver the full message.
Her claims about the definitions are at best incomplete and worst entirely misleading, especially because she did not actually identify which ones they were in a way that folks could easily verify her claims for themselves.
The word translated ‘child’ and ‘children’ in those Old Testament rod verses is na’ar, which when literally translated, means ‘young man.’
Not only is she literally wrong, to quote a more detailed part of the entry for naar:
From na'ar; (concretely) a boy (as active), from the age of infancy to adolescence; by implication, a servant; also (by interch. Of sex), a girl (of similar latitude in age) -- babe, boy, child, damsel (from the margin), lad, servant, young (man).
Can you see how that is not very specific definition at all, and how we'd need a lot more information than just the word by itself to really understand what is being said?
Let’s look, also, at the words translated ‘discipline’ and ‘punish’ and ‘rod’ and others:
The word muwcar is translated ‘discipline’ and means, literally, ‘verbal instruction and teaching.’ In Hebrew culture muwcar was vernacular for ‘let us reason with one another’ implying a mutual discussion for learning purposes. And towkechah is translated ‘reprove’ or ‘rebuke’ but also means ‘reason with, convince, prove, persuade.’ Neither of these words means to physically punish in any way, shape, or form.
"Your search - muwcar - did not match any documents."
towkechah - rebuke, correction
It's not good to reference a Hebrew word that doesn't show up in a concordance.
For the other one, again, look at how it is used and remember that there may not be another root word which carries this category of meaning. If you have one word for this type of correction relationship, then regardless of how that correction is supplied, this word is likely going to show up.
If you look at the verses outside Proverbs where this root word shows up, you'll see that what is common among them all is not the manner of correction, or why rebuke is occurring, but that it is occurring at all in some fashion.
As an example of how the root word can be used differently, I'll bold and recolor where it shows up in the following passage:
Let the saints be joyful in glory;
Let them sing aloud on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
And a two-edged sword in their hand,
To execute vengeance on the nations,
And punishments on the peoples;
To bind their kings with chains,
And their nobles with fetters of iron;
To execute on them the written judgment—
This honor have all His saints.
Praise the Lord! - Proverbs 149:5-9 (NKJV)
You can see it for yourself with an interlinear translation. Now, this doesn't mean that this is the same exact meaning as used anywhere else in scripture, but to demonstrate the flexibility of meaning that exists with the Hebrew language's root words.
That said, how many entirely verbal debates involve a two-edged sword in one's hand to execute vengeance?
Given how the article continues, we'll break here for Part 2.
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