LETTERS: THAT'S NOT EXACLTY WHAT BIBLE SAYS

To the editor:

I should like to see the copy of the Bible which contains the exact lines for sparing the rod and spoiling the child. I don't find it exactly that way in any of the seven Bibles in three languages that I examined. Proverbs 13:24 in the King James version reads, "He that spareth his rod hateth his son." Martin Luther in about 1540 translated it as "Wer seinen Rute (rod) schonet (does not use), der hasset (hates) seinen Sohn; were aber Lieb hat, der zuchtiget (punishes) ihn bald." If you go for Spanish, try "El que detiene el castigo, a su hio aborrece."

The Contemporary Bible gives, "If you love your children you will correct them. If you don't love them you won't correct them." This last one has all the appeal of warm skim milk for me.

Paul wrote in Hebrews 12:6, "The Lord corrects the people he loves and disciplines those he calls his own."

The closest I can come to the popular version is found in an obscure writer, Ralph Venning, who in 1649, some 35 years after the popular King James version, wrote, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." This is in a work named "Mysteries and Revelations."

My personal rendition goes, "If you like your kid, beat him up now and then," which I seriously find to be rather bad advice.

The writer who searches for truth and accuracy and worships the exact wording must know that Solomon lived at least 1,500 years before there was anything like the English language, and that the earliest English Bibles appeared long after this. But obviously truth was already truth, in Hebrew or Greek, German and Spanish, and our present languages.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau