Didascalia Apostolorum

tr. Connolly, 1929

XXII. That Children should be taught Crafts

And teach your children crafts that are agreeable and befitting to religion, lest through idleness they give themselves to wantonness. For if they are not corrected by their parents, they will do those things that are evil, like the heathen. Therefore spare not to rebuke and correct and teach them; for you will not kill them by chastising them,² but rather save them alive: as our Lord also teaches us in Wisdom, saying thus: Chasten thy son, that there may be hope for him: for thou shalt strike him with a rod, and deliver his soul from Sheol.³⁴⁵ And He saith again: Whosoever spareth his rod, hateth his son. Now our rod is the Word of God, Jesus Christ:⁶ even as Jeremiah also saw Him (as) an almond rod.⁷⁸ Every man accordingly who spares to speak a word of rebuke to his son, hates his son. Therefore teach your sons the word of the Lord, and punish them with stripes, and bring them into subjection from their youth by your word of religion. And give them no liberty to set themselves up against you their parents; and let them do nothing without your counsel, lest they go with those of their own age and meet together and carouse; for in this way they learn mischief, and are caught and fall into fornication. Now, whether this happen to them without their parents, their parents themselves will be accountable before God for the judgement of their souls; or whether again by your licence they are undisciplined and sin, you their parents will likewise be guilty on their account before God. Therefore be careful to take wives for them, and have them married when their time is come, lest in their early age by the ardour of youth they commit fornication like the heathen, and you have to render an account to the Lord God in the day of judgement.

Notes

Chap. XXII. AC places this chapter earlier (see p. 161).
Cf. Prov. xxiii 13.
Cf. Prov. xxix 17.
Prov. xxiii 14.
Prov. xiii 24.
Jesus Christ] ‘(even) of Jesus Christ’ Nau, Flemming, Funk: but the Syriac construction seems to require that the name be taken in apposition to ‘the Word’.
Jer. i 11 f.
an almond rod] Jer. i 11-12: the prophet sees an almond (shāḳed) rod; the Lord says ‘Thou hast seen well, for I am watching (shōḳed) over my words to perform them’ (so the Heb.). But this word-play is lost in the Gk., and so it is probable that our author goes to the passage only for the connexion of ‘rod’ with the ‘word’ of God.