Proverbs 13 Footnotes

13:24 Critics often point to verses like this as examples of cruelty and abuse of children. Such verses must be understood in the broader context of wisdom’s teaching about discipline. The Hebrew word for “disciplines” (musar) is also used for instructs, rebukes, and physically punishes. The goal of musar is always to change attitudes or behavior, and the methods for accomplishing this goal range from giving gifts and providing for needs to offering instruction, rebuke, and even corporal punishment. When God’s discipline of his people is taken as the model, it becomes clear that discipline should begin with the least painful and severe methods and escalate to harsher ones, only when the more gentle methods fail to bring about the desired changes. Wisdom also recognizes that children do not, by nature, gravitate toward wisdom and God’s order, and that left to themselves children will move toward folly and self-destruction. Discipline is seen as a good and necessary thing in order to move children toward God’s truth. Thus appropriate, not abusive, discipline is seen as an act of kindness and love. Only a parent who does not love his child will allow him to destroy himself through folly.

13:25 In a way typical of proverbial literature, this verse states in an unequivocal way the general truth that the righteous prosper while the wicked do not. That the wisdom tradition recognized that there were other cross sections of truth besides this one is clear from v. 22, where people’s produce is lost through injustice. All the cross sections of teaching must be brought together to construct a balanced picture of truth and reality.