Over the course of Church history, and 1,000 years of Jewish tradition before that, at least six different popular views on the meaning of Proverbs 22:6 have been proposed. This has been a great source of confusion and frustration for the average Christian reader.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
—KJV

Introduction

Proverbs 22:6 “is probably the best-known verse in Proverbs on child training” says one commentator.¹ And at the same time other Bible commentators say it is one of the most difficult verses in Proverbs to interpret and apply.² Many Bible expositors fail to even comment on it in their written works.³ One Bible scholar says it is futile to even attempt to explain it. The Septuagint (LXX), which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced just before the time of Christ, completely neglects this verse altogether, as it skips from 22:5 straight to 22:7! Maybe those Greek-Jewish scholars found the verse too difficult to deal with and just gave up?

But that should not be the approach of a Bible-believing Christian. We don’t wave the white flag of surrender when confronted with a challenging passage in God’s Word. Proverbs 22:6 definitely belongs in the Bible (Prov 20:5-6; John 10:35; Rev 22:19), was written by King Solomon (Prov 10:1), was inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Tim 3:16), and was intended by God to guide and encourage believing parents (Prov 1:1-4).

Since the time King Solomon penned Proverbs 22:6 (around 970 BC), it has been a verse of hope and encouragement to believing parents regarding the spiritual development of their children. For some it has even served as a foundational pillar for their overall parenting philosophy. At the same time, this verse has proved to be a source of guilt, confusion, and even frustration for many parents as their children left the faith never to return when they got older, a heart-breaking reality that flies in the face of what this proverb seems to promise at face value.

Because of the long-standing and universal reality of countless children turning their backs on the biblical faith of their parents, many have questioned the popular interpretation of this verse. More and more scholars and Bible teachers have likewise questioned the traditional understanding of this verse, thus engendering caution before presumptuously glomming onto its surface, promise-oriented words to parents. As a result, in the past century the meaning of this Hebrew maxim has been highly disputed in the believing community with respect to how it should be understood and applied by faithful parents. The goal of this chapter is to reexamine this divinely inspired maxim and get to its true meaning so that parents can have confidence in reading it, understanding it, and applying it.

Before coming to a conclusion on how to personally apply this verse, parents should first be aware of three important considerations surrounding it. Being conversant with these three considerations will bolster one’s ability to understand the proverb in keeping with the original author’s intention. The three pressing considerations include the following: (1) an awareness of the popular views suggested; (2) establishing a correct translation of the text; and (3) understanding the genre of the Book of Proverbs. We begin with a survey of the popular views that have been suggested throughout the centuries.

Popular Views

Over the course of Church history, and 1,000 years of Jewish tradition before that, at least six different popular views on the meaning of Proverbs 22:6 have been proposed. This has been a great source of confusion and frustration for the average Christian reader. The main views include the following: (1) the promise view; (2) the guideline view; (3) the tailoring view; (4) the warning view; (5) the baptismal view; (6) and the apprentice view.

The Promise View

We begin with the “promise” view, which has been the most popular view for ages. The promise view takes this verse as it is written in the King James version at face value. This view assumes this proverb is saying that if you start teaching your child beginning in their most impressionable years then you will set indelible convictions that he will retain for life. And these views will be religious and biblical in nature.

In other words, if parents teach their children the Bible starting when they are young, then they will believe the Bible when they are older. Some even say this verse promises parents that their children are guaranteed salvation when they are older if they are taught the Bible as children. So, the obligation of the parent in this view is to “teach” the child biblical truth in an ongoing manner, in every context possible. This is consistent with Deuteronomy 6:7 which commands parents to “teach [Bible truths] them diligently to your sons and…talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” The key here is to “teach” your children well and in every circumstance of life.

Teaching our young children biblical truth is a priority in parenting. It is essential to helping them develop a Christian world view. But “discipling” our children includes more than just “preaching” to our children. Children need to grow in four domains: spiritually, socially, physically and intellectually (Luke 2:52). There needs to be a balance. Those holding the traditional promise view can at times over-emphasize a rigid didactic, preachy approach to parenting, with the priority of imparting head knowledge through “teaching” while neglecting development in the other three areas. It holds that if a parent teaches the right things to their kids then God’s promise is the children will turn out right, maybe even securing their salvation. This view can lend itself to a mechanical approach to parenting, even one-dimensional, with the idea that just teaching the right information will prove to be the panacea to successful parenting. This view can also foster a legalistic approach to parenting due to its one-dimensional view if proper precautions for balance are not put in place.

 The popular pastor, Charles Bridges, championed this view 150 years ago and it is still widespread today.⁴ He called this verse a “rule” and a “command” for parenting. Children will become what they were taught by their parents. Bridges called the second part of this proverb “the parental promise” and “a plain promise.” He states categorically, “The man will be, as the child is trained.” Proper biblical instruction will bring results that are “sure,” he wrote. If the child becomes a “prodigal” at any point, he will certainly “return” to the faith later. Bridges goes on to say that if the children get off track later in life and leave the faith, then it was the parents’ fault. A child defecting is proof positive that the parents compromised their biblical mandate to teach their children properly. The children became defective because the parental instruction was defective or inconsistent somewhere along the way.

More and more Bible teachers are rejecting the traditional “promise” view for various reasons. One obvious one is that it blames the Christian parents for a child who becomes a rebel later in life. It operates on the faulty premise that good, consistent parenting will guarantee that a child will become a faithful, believing adult. A cursory reading of the Bible exposes such thinking as folly, for the greatest parent ever, YHWH of the Old Testament who is God the Father of the New Testament, had many children that He reared who defected. As a matter of fact, the majority of God’s “children” in the Old Testament, the Israelites, rebelled against the faith. Yet, God is the perfect parent. The Book of Isaiah begins with God lamenting in heartache over His children who turned against Him and His perfect, loving, fatherly care:

Listen, O heavens, and hear O earth;
For the LORD speaks,
“Sons I have brought up,
But they have revolted against Me” (Isa 1:2).

The “promise” view has some challenges at face value. It is not wrong for suggesting that Proverbs 22:6 makes a promise. In fact. I believe it does make a promise. The question is, what is that promise? I don’t think the promise is that parents can be assured that their kids will be eternally saved contingent upon the parents’ aptitude in teaching Bible doctrine to their kids. The promise is something else which we will examine shortly.

The Guideline View

The second popular view is what I call the “guideline” view. Proponents of this view usually accept the King James translation of the verse but emphasize that this verse is not a hard-and-fast truism, or a guaranteed promise. Their focus is on the disputed phrase, “he will not depart from it.” As such, they say that this proverb is just a suggested guideline, albeit a Divine one at that. It’s a rule of thumb, a general truism; but it is not a binding promise. Generally speaking, says the guideline view, children raised with biblical instruction are likely to live in accordance with a modicum of biblical principles later in life, but there are always exceptions. Advocates of this mitigated view argue that the whole Book of Proverbs is constituted of just wise guidelines and not axiomatic, universally guaranteed truths.⁵ They do so to accommodate the reality that many good and godly parents have produced children who have rejected the faith. They say ultimately it is the child who is responsible to either believe in Christ or reject Him. Parents can’t coerce their children to believe; therefore, this verse cannot be an iron-clad promise.

This view has some merit but has challenges as well. An obvious weakness is that it is based on a wrong view of the Book of Proverbs, categorically saying that all the proverbs are only general guidelines and not promises. That is just not the case. The book of proverbs has over 500 individual proverbs which are written by different authors and contain a wide variety of literary composition. Not all the proverbs are the same. Proverbs 22:6 is in a section of the Book of Proverbs that has many clear divine promises as well as universally true and binding axioms. For example, Proverbs 15:3 says, “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the evil and the good.” That assertion is indeed always universally true and binding. And 22:2 says, “The rich and the poor have a common bond, the Lord is the maker of them all.” Those two proverbs are Hebrew couplets written in synthetic parallelism just like Proverbs 22:6, and those two verses are not just sacred suggestions or godly guidelines. They are always true for everyone.⁶

Another shortcoming of the “guideline” view is that it fails to highlight, or even mention, that Proverbs 22:6 is an imperative.⁷ The main Hebrew verb that begins the sentence is a command, an imperative from God to parents. In that regard, Bridges was correct in seeing this as a divine mandate which entails a promise. And it is a definitive command from God which He expects believing parents to obey. Ironically, the proponents of the “guideline” view would not typically label other commands in the Bible as mere “guidelines” that are sometimes true and sometimes not.

The Tailoring View

The third view I call the “tailoring” view and it is rising in popularity. This view takes the verse to mean, “Tailor your parenting priorities in keeping with your child’s unique personality, particular needs, individual propensities, and innate abilities, for every child is different.” Advocates of this view prioritize the middle phrase, “in the way he should go.” The “promise” view people prioritize the last phrase in the verse: “he will not depart from it.” The “guideline” view people prioritize the first phrase in the verse: “Train up a child.”

Those holding the “tailoring” view understand the phrase, “in the way he should go,” to mean, “according to his way.” They emphasize and personalize the pronoun “his,” as the determining factor, and the phrase “his way” becomes the determining exegetical definer of this proverb. They argue “his way” means each child’s unique “bent” that God instilled in them from the time of conception. So, they understand this proverb to say, “Train up each child according to his or her unique bent.” One child may be born as an introvert while a sibling may be born as an extrovert. One child may be an artistic, left-brained thinker while his twin could be born a right-brained thinker drawn toward engineering. The parents need to figure these details out and then parent accordingly, catering all available pedagogical resources and energy to each child’s differentiating internal “bent.”

Understanding each child’s specific personality is key to this approach. In this view, the child’s personal DNA drives the parenting process. Parenting is then “reactive” and “responsive” more than it is “directive.” Parenting “accommodates” more than it “dictates.” Each parent, then, must assume the role of a privatized Sherlock Holmes, to discover the innate mysteries of each child that will unlock his full potential. Of all the views, practically speaking, this approach is one of the most “child-centered.” Pastor Chuck Swindoll has been one of the more popular advocates of this view for the past generation, and many have followed suit.⁸

Similar to this view is the more general interpretation which says “his way” refers to the unique life and growth seasons that all children go through from birth to adulthood. This view is a little less individualized than the preceding view, but is still in the same genus. This view follows the behavioral model of secular psychology. Gene Getz has popularized this view.⁹ He says there are four specific seasons of life humans go through as they develop: (1) the security phase which is birth to age one; (2) the exploratory phase, age one to two; (3) the imitation phase, ages two to three; and (4) the identification phase, up to age four. Parenting and the instruction of young children needs to be tailored to their unique needs in light of their age and development. “Don’t treat little kids like adults,” is the gist.¹⁰

Although this view has practical wisdom with respect to common sense in parenting, it does not actually represent what Proverbs 22:6 teaches based on the grammar, syntax and context. This view is actually quite recent compared to the promise view which has been around for millennia. This “new” view infuses too much specific artificial meaning into the one generic prepositional phrase, “according to his way,” at the neglect of other key terms and phrases in the verse, especially the main imperative which begins the verse. In fact, it categorically gives an illegitimate meaning to the adverbial phrase, “according to his way.” It is a common phrase, or idiom, in the Hebrew Old Testament and never means, “according to his bent.” It is best translated as, “according to his way,” or “the way he should go.”¹¹ Its many usages show that it means, “what is appropriate to an established authority or standard.”¹² The way a child should go is determined by God’s universal standard, not the child’s individual DNA. This view also holds too narrow of a meaning for the Hebrew word for “child” (Heb. na’ar). It does not only refer to infants and toddlers as Getz seems to imply. The Hebrew word can also refer to teens and young men.

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