(See Part 1)
There is another way to translate Proverbs 22:6, the proverb that traditionally goes:
“Train a boy in the way he should go; Even when he grows old he will not depart from it.” (NWT)
The above is the typical rendering. Almost all Bible translations do it similarly, if not identically:
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” NIV
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” RSV
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” KJV
“Train a child in the way he [should] go; and, even when old, he will not swerve from it.” CJB
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” ESV
They almost all do it this way.
But there is another way to render the verse. It can be rendered as a cautionary proverb that if you indulge a child’s bad behavior, it gets locked in:
“Train up a child according to his way, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.” LSB (Legacy Standard Bible)
This second way has the advantage of being more literal. “His way” is the child’s own natural way. There is nothing here about how the child “should” be. Instead, it is how the child is.
Turns out that there is no Hebrew word corresponding to “he should go.” It’s an English insertion. Almost all Bibles do it. But it’s an insertion. Is it to make inspiring and uplifting what really is a warning that “you’d better not mess this up?” Give in to a child’s own self-willed, sinful tendencies—“his own way”—and it becomes locked into place. Leave off on the hard work of loving discipline, and the child’s “own way” will emerge as dominant. The “even when he is old, he will not depart from it” is not a desirable outcome. it is an undesirable one. But you ensure it by giving into him when young.
That rendering does sort of fit with other proverbs, such 22:15. “ Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a boy, But the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” The default mode of people is not wild and free and wonderful. It is wild and free and a nightmare—or at least, a potential nightmare.
Translators don’t like that view however. Few give in to it. Count up the almost 60 translations on display at Biblegateway*com. At most, you’ll find 10 that do it the cautionary way. Mostly, they prefer the long Christian interpretive tradition of “way he should go” even though the “should go” is not in the Hebrew. They “turn that frown upside down” to read more inspirational and to fit better with the overall theme of Proverb that wisdom works out to benefit us.
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