Measuring rods, lines and staffs

Revelation 11:1 [1]
Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told,

You don’t need to go outside of scripture to figure out that some interpretations are missing the point. As I was growing up the passage about ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ was quoted to excuse hitting a child with a stick or cane. The part that never quite got mentioned was that the Hebrew passage referred to a measuring instrument that wasn’t necessarily a stick or rod but could be more like a plumb line that one uses for measuring how straight a wall is being built.

The passage on ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ is about correcting a child, but not about beating a child. The passage is about training and example, but not about force and brutality. The passage is about leading a child into the path of righteousness rather than might makes right. As the passage from Revelations shows the measuring device isn’t the stick that some imagine.

Spoiling the child is a result of not providing standards rather than the not providing a spanking.