Corporal Punishment in the Bible

A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic for Troubling Texts

William J. Webb

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780830869022
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

William Webb confronts those often avoided biblical passages that call for the corporal punishment of children, slaves and wrongdoers. How should we understand and apply them today? Are we obligated to replicate those injunctions today? Or does the proper interpretation of them point in a different direction? Webb notes that most of the Christian church is at best inconsistent in its application of these texts. But is there a legitimate basis for these lapses? Building on the findings of his previous work, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals, Webb argues that the proper interpretation and application of these texts requires ascertaining their meaning within the ancient cultural/historical context. In recognizing the sweep of God?s redemptive purposes already evident in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New, we remain truly biblical.

Part I:

Troubling Texts

1

Biblical Texts, Ethical Dilemmas and Hermeneutical Inconsistencies

Christian advocates of spanking generally claim that their practices have the backing of Scripture, and thus God’s approval. They view the Bible and its instructions about corporal punishment as a solid basis for their disciplinary methods. The most notable spokesperson for corporal punishment in the evangelical Christian context is James Dobson and the Focus on the Family organization.[1] Along with others, Dobson presents his teachings about spanking as rooted in the Bible. True biblical obedience means daring to follow God’s instructions about corporal punishment of one’s children.[2]

At the outset of this discussion let me clearly say that I am not at odds in any polarized or hostile sense with Dobson’s “two-smacks-max” approach to disciplining children. While we ultimately differ in methods, it is not his method itself that I find most troubling. In fact, I really like where he has come over the years in his development of a restrained two-smacks-max method.[3] Our differences in disciplinary methods for raising children are important but secondary to the larger hermeneutical issues about how Christians derive their ethic from Scripture.

So, what is the crucial hermeneutical issue? What I find most problematic is the appeal by Christian pro-spankers to the Bible in order to validate their corporal punishment practices. In short, Christian pro-spankers claim that they have the Bible on their side. The Bible clearly teaches corporal punishment, they say, and thus their instructions about spanking children are biblical. As typical of this concrete-specific approach, Wayne Grudem argues from the instruction of Scripture that there really is no other “biblical position” than for Christian parents to support the use of corporal punishment in society and to use corporal punishment in the discipline of their children.[4] For a Christian parent to do otherwise is in some way to undermine biblical authority. At one point I held this perspective. I actually taught this view to theological students and to pastors. What I have discovered, however, is that I was wrong. It is not an overstatement to say that this hermeneutical journey has left me surprised and even dumbfounded at times. I came to realize that at the level of concrete-specific instructions in Scripture, my beloved two-smacks-max parenting method had very little correlation to what the Bible actually teaches about corporal punishment.

I promise to walk gently down the corridors of Focus on the Family, because it functions as a valuable family support ministry for the church. We in theological academia (seminary professors) must shoulder the greater responsibility for the current confusion about how to read and apply Scripture. Thus while citing Focus on the Family and Dobson in this chapter, my strongest disagreements lie with biblical scholars such as Andreas Köstenberger, Al Mohler, Wayne Grudem and Paul Wegner, who have recently published on this subject. They cite the classic “beating with the rod” texts from Proverbs in order to derive a biblical mandate for parents to spank their children today:

Those who spare the rod hate their children,
but those who love them are diligent to discipline them. (Prov 13:24)

Folly is bound up in the heart of a boy,
but the rod of discipline drives it far away. (Prov 22:15)

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 [the grave or premature death]. (Prov 23:13-14)

The rod and reproof give wisdom,
but a mother is disgraced by a neglected child. (Prov 29:15; cf. Prov 19:18; 29:17)

Upon reading these proverbs Christian parents are easily persuaded about the pro-spankers’ claim that the spanking of children today is indeed biblical and even necessary.

After placing the weight of responsibility on Christian academia, let me temper any combative posture with an embarrassing confession. I used to cite these Proverbs as support for spanking in exactly the same way as Köstenberger, Mohler, Grudem, Wegner and others do. I cannot give them a hard time over the way that they handle these texts. In a sense, my disagreement is not with them at all. It is with me—my former self! I am the one who has severely mishandled these texts over the years without being the least bit aware of it. I have slowly come to understand the degree to which I was not really teaching or following the Bible with my two-smacks-max pro-spanking methods. To a large extent, I and others have forgotten to read the rod and whip texts within the broader biblical teaching about corporal punishment. We have also forgotten to understand and appreciate them within the horizon of the ancient Near Eastern world. Accordingly, this chapter walks through ways that I was blind to much that the Bible teaches about corporal punishment. While I will cite various Christian scholars on the pro-spanking side for illustration’s sake, a number of years ago I could easily have written their materials.

Over the years the pro-spanking Christian community has unwittingly moved beyond the Bible and its concrete-specific teachings about the rod and whip. This chapter outlines the seven ways. To peek ahead, however, chapters two and three will argue that the pro-spankers’ movement beyond the Bible’s concrete-specific teaching is actually is a good thing. I truly think that they have moved beyond the Bible biblically. I suspect that this redemptive movement or ethical development is for many rooted in an intuitive sense of moral and ethical virtue. It is the mind of Christ, as Paul would say, functioning within the church community. But I am getting ahead of myself. I jumped ahead with a glimpse of what is coming only so that you will not be overly harsh in your opinion of these pro-spankers for not doing what the Bible clearly teaches. In five of the examples today’s pro-spankers have chosen to disregard an explicit teaching of Scripture; in two examples they disregard an implicit teaching of Scripture. Nevertheless, whether it is explicit or implicit teaching on corporal punishment, at a concrete-specific level today’s pro-spankers (and I was one of them) are not doing what the Bible teaches in its fuller discussion of the subject.

Here are the seven ways that pro-spankers go beyond the specific teachings about corporal punishment found in the Bible: (1) age limitations, (2) the number of lashes or strokes, (3) the bodily location of the beating, (4) the resultant bruising, welts and wounds, (5) the instrument of discipline, (6) the frequency of beatings and offenses punishable, and (7) the emotive disposition of the parent. We will examine each of these.

Age Limitations

Christian advocates for spanking today generally place an upper age limit somewhere around ten years. Wegner states that spanking should decrease at age six and be rarely, if ever, used beyond age ten.[5] According to Köstenberger spanking may not work well with older children, and as children advance in age, reasoning ought to replace spanking.[6] Focus on the Family provides similar age-restricted guidelines: spanking works best between ages two and six; most spanking should occur during preschool years and become less and less frequent, tapering off completely between age nine and twelve; no spanking teenagers.[7]

Do age limits on spanking really reflect what the Bible teaches about corporal punishment? No, I do not think so. We can invoke age restrictions on spanking only if a handful of Proverbs texts are taken out of the broader teaching in the Bible about corporal punishment. Once dislodged from their biblical moorings, this package of Proverbs often is blessed by citing Hebrews 12 about a loving God disciplining his children, and then we are set to introduce any sort of age-restricted physical discipline we want. Unfortunately, this highly modified spanking version of the rod passages today does not reflect Scripture’s face-value teaching or concrete-specific instruction about corporal punishment.

So what are the Bible’s age limits on corporal punishment? Based on the concrete-specific teachings of the Bible, the answer quite simply is there are none! That’s right. There are no age limits. The instructions for beating children in Scripture do not stand alone; they intersect with at least three other spheres of corporal punishment: slaves, fools and Torah violators. For each of these categories the adult application of the rod or whip was a normative biblical virtue. The Deuteronomy text that establishes physical beatings as a broad-based punishment for Torah infractions (Deut 25:1-3) was in all likelihood applied as early as twelve to fourteen years of age.[8] The Exodus text that supports beating slaves (Ex 21:20-21) may well have applied to all slaves regardless of their age.[9] The verses in Proverbs that encourage the use of corporal punishment for fools seem to have a fairly broad referent that may have at times included both adults and children. At the very least there would be a tacit aspect of referential overlap because the child-discipline texts emphasize the curbing of “foolishness,” which would tie them conceptually with the texts about “beating fools” (Prov 10:13; 18:6; 19:29; 26:3).[10] Given this larger biblical context, the idea of primarily spanking preschoolers, tapering off from there and eliminating all spankings for teenagers, while appearing reasonable to contemporary readers, is simply not biblical at the level of what the Bible explicitly teaches.

Along these lines, the overlap in purpose or function makes age limitations rather inappropriate. Notice that the negative purpose of “driving out foolishness” in the child text of Proverbs 22:15 is the same virtue that appears across a much broader age spectrum of verses about corporal punishment:

Child

Folly is bound up in the heart of a boy,
but the rod of discipline drives it [namely, foolishness ] far away. (Prov 22:15)

Adult

A fool’s lips bring strife,
and a fool’s mouth invites a flogging. (Prov 18:6)

Condemnation is ready for scoffers,
and flogging for the backs of fools. (Prov 19:29)

A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey,
and a rod for the back of fools. (Prov 26:3; cf. Prov 10:13)

If beatings get rid of foolishness in both children and adults, why stop at any age?

Correspondingly, the positive purpose of encouraging wisdom, obedience and knowledge is a shared virtue that fuses together the child texts of Proverbs (and the ancient Jewish writing, Wisdom of Sirach)[11] with other biblical texts directed toward adult slaves and fools:

Child

The rod and reproof give wisdom,
but a mother is disgraced by a neglected child. (Prov 29:15)

Bow down his neck in his youth,
and beat his sides while he is young,

or else he will become stubborn and disobey you,
and you will have sorrow of soul from him. (Sir 30:12)

Adult

By mere words servants are not disciplined,
for though they understand, they will not give heed [will not be obedient]. (Prov 29:19)

Strike [beat] a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence;
reprove the intelligent, and they will gain knowledge. (Prov 19:25)

In view of this overlap in functional language, the Bible unquestionably teaches that teenagers would benefit from beatings or lashes for the purpose of driving out foolishness and building up wisdom and knowledge. Against the grain of pro-spankers today who have abandoned corporal punishment for teenagers, on a concrete-specific teaching level the Bible says it is helpful! One might be inclined to go with the Bible here (please bear with my hypothetical critique) if for no other reason than what is obvious about teenagers. While at times they evidence maturity beyond their years, it is also the case that teens frequently give the term foolishness a whole new range of colorful meanings. One might say that teenagers at times specialize in foolishness! Given the larger context of scriptural teaching on corporal punishment and its overlapping purposes that span all ages, the biblical admonition to today’s parents is clear: teenagers need foolishness driven out by the rod during these wild and wooly years just as much as, if not more than, in earlier phases of their development.

Of course, my point here is not really a critique of contemporary two-smacks-max child discipline practices. At the level of praxis I agree with them on how they are handling teenagers—I think it is a good thing not to spank teenagers and older elementary age children within today’s world. The real issue that I am wrestling with in this chapter is this—What then does it mean to be biblical in our contemporary application of Scripture? Please understand that I am interacting with the perspective of those who typically see their c...