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Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
Spare the rod, spoil the child
The famous exact wording is from a 17th-century English poem, not Scripture.
Proverbs 13:24, in every translation this tool compares.
The line comes from Samuel Butler's mock-epic poem Hudibras, Part II, entered in the Stationers' Register on November 5, 1663. In its original setting it has nothing to do with parenting: it's part of a mocking passage comparing lovesickness to a spoiled child, arguing that indulging love (like indulging a child) only makes the affliction worse.
Butler was almost certainly playing off Proverbs, which does address discipline directly: "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him" (Proverbs 13:24). But the word "spoil" and the now-famous couplet structure belong to Butler's 17th-century wit, not to the Hebrew text. The popular line is a poet's riff on a real biblical idea, several steps removed from it.
