Verse 4
4. Fathers Specially addressed as head and representative, with whom despotism, instead of over indulgence, is the more probable fault.
Provoke not… wrath Avoid exciting angry passions and making such excitements habitual. The fierce countenance and angry tone children will soon learn to imitate, and become themselves readily fierce and angry. On the contrary, a calm, serene firmness ever maintained is a lesson that moulds them to calmness and serenity of character. Children under reasonable, rather than passionate, control, soon learn that there is reason in the control. Happy is the family where serene rule in the parents diffuses serene conduct through the whole.
Bring them up Embracing the whole process, bodily and mental, of bringing from infancy to majority.
Nurture Rather, discipline; the entire training by gentle or severe means to right character. It no doubt implies severity and chastisement in its place. Among the Greeks ακολασια , literally, unchastisedness, was a word to signify profligacy. Those spurious philanthropists who would forbid all chastisement of children, ought, in consistency, to prohibit all punishment of adult transgressors, and so abolish all criminal law, and give up society to the mercies of lawless men.
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