What Does the Bible Say About Punishing Children?

Proverbs 23:13-14 ESV / 25 helpful votes

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.

Proverbs 22:15 ESV / 20 helpful votes

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

Proverbs 29:15 ESV / 18 helpful votes

The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

Proverbs 22:6 ESV / 17 helpful votes

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 13:24 ESV / 17 helpful votes

Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

Ephesians 6:4 ESV / 11 helpful votes

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Exodus 21:17 ESV / 9 helpful votes

“Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.

Romans 6:23 ESV / 7 helpful votes

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ephesians 6:1 ESV / 6 helpful votes

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Proverbs 29:17 ESV / 6 helpful votes

Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.

Hebrews 12:6-7 ESV / 5 helpful votes

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

Daniel 9:24-27 ESV / 5 helpful votes

“Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 ESV / 5 helpful votes

“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 ESV / 5 helpful votes

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall 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.

Mark 9:43 ESV / 4 helpful votes

And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

Proverbs 19:18 ESV / 4 helpful votes

Discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death.

Exodus 20:12 ESV / 4 helpful votes

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

2 Peter 2:4 ESV / 3 helpful votes

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

Colossians 3:20 ESV / 3 helpful votes

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

Proverbs 23:24 ESV / 3 helpful votes

The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.

Proverbs 1:8 ESV / 3 helpful votes

Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching,

Exodus 21:15 ESV / 3 helpful votes

“Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.

Exodus 20:5 ESV / 3 helpful votes

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,

James 3:6 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

Colossians 3:21 ESV / 2 helpful votes

Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

Romans 13:4 ESV / 2 helpful votes

For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

Acts 2:31 ESV / 2 helpful votes

He foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

Luke 16:23 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

Luke 15:11-32 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. ...

Luke 2:51 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

Mark 9:47 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,

Matthew 25:46 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Matthew 23:15 ESV / 2 helpful votes

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Malachi 4:3 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.

Malachi 4:1 ESV / 2 helpful votes

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

Ezekiel 28:18 ESV / 2 helpful votes

By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries; so I brought fire out from your midst; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you.

Ezekiel 20:47 ESV / 2 helpful votes

Say to the forest of the Negeb, Hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will kindle a fire in you, and it shall devour every green tree in you and every dry tree. The blazing flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from south to north shall be scorched by it.

Ezekiel 18:20 ESV / 2 helpful votes

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

Psalm 127:3-5 ESV / 2 helpful votes

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127:3 ESV / 2 helpful votes

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.

Psalm 58:3 ESV / 2 helpful votes

The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.

Psalm 51:5 ESV / 2 helpful votes

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

2 Chronicles 33:6 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.

2 Chronicles 28:3 ESV / 2 helpful votes

And he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.

Deuteronomy 4:10 ESV / 2 helpful votes

How on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’

Exodus 21:12 ESV / 2 helpful votes

“Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death.

Exodus 20:13 ESV / 2 helpful votes

“You shall not murder.

Revelation 20:10 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Revelation 1:18 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

Jude 1:6 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—

2 Peter 3:7 ESV / 1 helpful vote

But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

Colossians 1:18 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

Ephesians 6:1-4 ESV / 1 helpful vote

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Galatians 4:4 ESV / 1 helpful vote

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,

1 Corinthians 14:33 ESV / 1 helpful vote

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 ESV / 1 helpful vote

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ...

Acts 2:27 ESV / 1 helpful vote

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption.

John 3:16 ESV / 1 helpful vote

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Luke 12:5 ESV / 1 helpful vote

But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

Mark 9:45 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.

Matthew 25:41 ESV / 1 helpful vote

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Matthew 18:9 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

Matthew 5:22 ESV / 1 helpful vote

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Malachi 4:5 ESV / 1 helpful vote

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

Daniel 12:2 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Isaiah 66:24 ESV / 1 helpful vote

“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

Isaiah 34:9 ESV / 1 helpful vote

And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch.

Psalm 37:20 ESV / 1 helpful vote

But the wicked will perish; the enemies of the Lord are like the glory of the pastures; they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.

Psalm 21:9 ESV / 1 helpful vote

You will make them as a blazing oven when you appear. The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them.

Exodus 34:7 ESV / 1 helpful vote

Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Genesis 19:24 ESV / 1 helpful vote

Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

Genesis 2:17 ESV / 1 helpful vote

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

72 Bible Verses about Punishing Children