Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 10 Nov. 2019
Omitting greyed-out text should bring presentation time down around 45 minutes.
In the year 1552, a group of John Calvin’s seminary students who were planting a church in southern France sent a report back by mail. Things had not gone well. Five of them had been imprisoned by the Roman Catholic authorities in Lyon and had been sentenced to death. Given the circumstances, it is astounding to read what these five men wrote, “We testify that this is the true school of the children of God in which they learn more than the disciples of the philosophers ever did in their universities… [We praise God for giving us] not only the theory of his Word, but also the practice of it.”
Verse Three transitions from looking at and considering Christ to looking at our own experiences of hardship in the light of Christ’s experiences of hardship – and relating these experiences to our relationship with God the Father and His master plan for us.
The reason why we must start thinking logically and consider Jesus’ suffering is “so that y’all might not continue to be weary, fainting/discouraged/literally “losing it” in your souls
“Let your afflictions but rouse into more energetic vigour all the principles of Christian obedience… To faint and be weary, is just the reverse of persevering labour and suffering for the name of Christ.. If [we] ‘become weary and faint in [our] minds’ it is because [we] do not ‘consider Him.’ If [we] neglect our duty, it is because [we] forget [our] Savior…. All our comfort, all our holiness, depends on this.” ~John Brown of Edinborough
The word translated contesting/striving/struggling is based on the same word back in verse 1 translated “race/contest.” The contest in which they are currently striving – although not to the point of losing blood over it, is the same contest of faith laid out before the believers to run with eyes on Jesus, trusting that God will bring evil to justice, that God will reward faith and obedience in Him, and that Jesus is not a dead criminal but rather is in heaven officiating as our glorious High Priest to make us right with God.
The New Testament believers to whom the book of Hebrews was addressed needed this encouragement not to give in to pressure to give up their faith in Jesus. The words “not yet” indicate that, even though they hadn’t laid their lives on the line for their faith in Jesus, they might yet have to do so in their lifetime.
Jesus shed His blood when He ran His race on earth, and that blood was the payment to buy us back from bondage to sin and guilt before God. Some believers throughout history have also had to resist sin to the point of going to their deaths rather than denying that these things are true of Jesus.
Their blood doesn’t help anybody else get saved like Jesus’ blood did,
but martyrs nevertheless provide a powerful call to all who see them to trust Jesus,
and it provides compelling evidence for God to condemn the wicked, because God says He hears their blood crying out from the ground for justice and He acts on that appeal – although not always as quickly as we’d like Him to.
If you have not had to risk your life for your faith in Jesus, thank God for His gentleness with you and don’t complain about the things that are hard for you.
But if there ever is a point where you have to risk your life and shed your blood, know that this is no more than Jesus already did for you, and He will be with you and help you to endure even death for His glory.
Now, the key word repeated in the next few verses is the word “discipline/paideia/paideuw”
This word, which us used to describe the hard experiences in our lives, creates a context for understanding why difficulties happen to us.
Discipline is necessarily connected with willpower and goal-setting. Discipline involves choosing to do something difficult in order to achieve a purpose.
Discipline without purpose is abuse. It would be abusive for a father to put his children through hardships with no intent for their benefit, just to boss them around.
Likewise, there is no such thing as discipline without willpower: the child who demands that people provide things for him without him putting out any effort to achieve those things for himself is an undisciplined child.
So the very choice of this word “discipline” frames our hardships in such a way that it forces us to consider that there must be a goal behind the hardships that we encounter – and that there must be a certain amount of difficulty that just has to be endured in order to achieve that goal.
Proverbs 3:11-12 is quoted verbatim in verses 5-6 here, but notice how it is introduced as “the exhortation/encouragement addressed to you as a lecture to a son,” and furthermore, notice how it implies that they should have known and put into practice this proverb – they were “remiss” for “forgetting” it and letting it totally escape their attention.
This lets us in on the will of God in regards to the Old Testament wisdom books. They are not to be left to moulder on the shelf; God wants Christians to read the book of Proverbs1!
(You may remember the Eden boys that visit our church occasionally: they have taken this to heart; they memorized the entire book of Proverbs!)
This verse implies that if you are not familiar with the Proverbs and you do something stupid because you were not aware of – or had forgotten – God’s warnings against it in the book of Proverbs, it’s your own fault for wiping out.
But for those of us who are forgetful and unobservant, there is still grace. The apostle backs up and provides the whole text of the Proverb for the benefit of the church, calling them to see how it applies to them even though they had overlooked it. Thank God that He patiently repeats things to us when we’re boneheaded!
God’s relationship to you is that of a Father to a child. (The word “sons” is used generically here and includes daughters.) He’s not going to leave us alone to fend for ourselves in the midst of all our needs or to stagnate as morons in the midst of our immaturity. God deals with us lovingly as with children who need training to grow us up in love and Christian character.
This statement about suffering in Hebrews is not intended to explain the suffering experienced by those who are not God’s children. The wicked don’t experience discipline as sons, they experience punishment for wrongdoing, and that is a different thing2. What we’re talking about here is the suffering that Christians undergo.
There are two admonitions in the opening statement of this proverb – two “extremes” that Christians are apt to run into under persecution: either to take no notice and make light of an affliction, or else to be overwhelmed by it and sink under it. If you observe either one of these happening in your life, this is your warning system! (M. Henry, J. Gill)
The first is: “don’t keep belittling the Lord’s training/discipline/chastening”
The present tense verb in Greek indicates that this has been an ongoing problem and it needs to stop now.
I suspect that the problem faced by the first century Jewish believers is similar to the problem faced by Christians today exposed to the prosperity gospel. It is tempting to believe, in light of the miracles by which Jesus alleviated so many people’s problems, that if you just trust Jesus, all your difficulties will go away and you’ll be rich and healthy and loved by everyone. Jesus handed out free food; healed everybody’s sicknesses, and promised a more abundant life, so it was a no-brainer to follow Him. But when Jesus left earth and the going got tough, and the authorities put pressure on His followers to leave Christianity, that’s when it got tempting to “make light of” the Lord – and even despise Him.
Some who get trapped in that distortion “make light” of God’s discipline by abandon-ing Christianity when it gets hard. They don’t consider God’s purposes weighty enough to endure hardship, so they drift away from the church and join the world.
Some even decide God must not exist because they think that for God to exist, nothing bad would ever happen. The Bible, however, teaches that bad things exist and that God exists – both at the same time, and explains that bad things come from disobeying God, yet God nevertheless works all things together for good.
Some Christians, on the other hand, cling to their belief in God, but tend to think that anything uncomfortable that happens to them is punishment from God and that God must be displeased with them an awful lot. They walk under the constant dread of having to experience more punishment – and fear that they can never please God. That makes light of His discipline – in a different way – by thinking of it as a mean, dreadful thing when it is, in fact, a good, fatherly thing.
But if we look at hardship as “training,” we can comprehend that experiences of verbal admonition (elegxomenos) and even of getting whipped (mastigoi) don’t mean that God is nonexistent or that He is powerless to help you or even that He is mad at you; they actually mean that God loves you and is doing something positive with you.
Count such discipline as valuable, as “important blessings... not the strokes of an enemy but the rod of a father3” ~J. Brown
The second admonition is: “don’t keep coming undone when you are being reproved”
Once again, the present tense verb in Greek indicates this was an ongoing problem that needed to be brought to an end.
When rebuked – when God laid out a case showing that they were wrong about something, instead of persevering in their relationship with God, they got tired of Christianity and literally “lost” it. (This coming undone/fainting/losing heart is the same word as in v.3)
However, the fact stated at the end of v.5 that God brings reproof should be a great comfort to believers that the uncomfortable things happening to us are not accidents and are not going to get out of control; they are actually God’s training strategies carefully designed to achieve certain good results in our character! The very thing that tempts you to feel that God has deserted you is the very thing that proves God has not deserted you!4
The chiastic structure of the Greek words in this verse emphasizes that it’s the children who are loved by God that He turns His attention to disciplining and training. He doesn’t pay that kind of regard to those He doesn’t receive as His.
Rev. 3:19 "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent." (NKJV)
Don’t misunderstand this. The scripture does not say that hardship is a proof that you are a child of God; what it does say here is that suffering is not a proof that you’re NOT a child of God.
When Jesus hung on the cross, mockers said, “He trusted in God, let God deliver him if God delights in him,” implying that if God did not rescue Jesus off the cross then and there, God the Father must not love Jesus.
This is a lie that Satan has introduced into the minds of believers throughout history. “See how you are suffering? That proves that God doesn’t love you! If God loved you, you wouldn’t be suffering right now.”
Jesus saw through that lie and continued to trust His Father and commit His soul to Him, and we must do the same.
“Afflictions, however severe, are no proofs that we are not God’s children.” ~John Brown of Edinborough
When you feel trouble coming into your life and recognize it as the training of the Lord, don’t conclude that He hates you; believe that He loves you, because He only does that for those He loves and accepts. If He didn’t care about you, He would just let you go on sinning and let you perish in your sin. God’s interventions are acts of love!
Can you say, “God thank you for bringing this hardship into my life to train me. You must know I need it. Please help me become more like Christ through it!”
But what if it hurts? The Greek word mastigoi in the second half of this verse is a bit startling: it means to beat someone with a whip.
The NIV and ESV tried to tone down their translations with “punishes/chastises,”
but it’s the same word used for the whippings the Egyptian taskmasters did to the Israelites when they were slaves (Ex. 5),
the same word used in the judicial code about the 40 lashes that should be done to criminals (Deut. 25),
and the same word for the flogging Jesus took in John 19:1 before His crucifixion.
Jesus also warned His disciples that they might have to endure public floggings as religious persecution from their fellow Jews (Mat. 10:17).
The fact that Jesus endured it should give us courage to endure whatever He endured. He will be with us and He knows exactly what it feels like.
Now, for those of us in twenty-first century America, a literal whipping is not something we are ever likely to face, but pain and injustice there still will be, whether from sickness or infirmity or from prejudice from Christians or non-Christians, there are still plenty of ways God can challenge carnality in your life and chisel off sinful thoughts and attitudes.
But just because it hurts doesn’t mean God is powerless or that God is mean or that He has rejected you. If He has set out to save you, He will use that pain to train you into possessing more of His own good character qualities than you could ever have been trained any other way.
I’ve been reading a book entitled, The Heavenly Man, an autobiography of Brother Yun, a pastor in one of the large Chinese house church networks. He said, “In 1991, a season of strong persecution again came upon the house churches. One night as I lay down in bed, my wife suddenly awoke from a dream. Her heart was pounding and she was frightened by what she had seen. She exclaimed, ‘We must grab our Bibles and leave now!’ … [The Holy Spirit had also told me to leave, and my co-workers had warned me not to stay at home, but] Pride had sprung up in my heart like a choking weed. Instead of obeying God’s voice…, I reasoned with human logic and based my decisions on my own wisdom … I told my wife, ‘Look, the time for the wheat harvest is almost upon us. Let’s wait a few days, then we’ll go.’ … Four days after Deling’s dream, plain-clothes PSB officers ambushed me outside my home. They bound and arrested me… Because of disobedience and disrespect for the Lord, my wife, and my co-workers, I went to prison for a second time. The Lord saw I was exhausted in the ministry, so he graciously allowed me to rest in him behind bars for a while and learn about inner spiritual life… I repented with many tears and threw myself on the Lord’s grace and mercy. He forgave me and increased my faith… I [was] sentenced to three years... in the Da’an labour camp… I [hadn’t even finished] High School… [but t]he whole experience was like a much-needed Bible seminary for me. I learned more of God’s character and he taught me how to be a living witness for him… I’ve suffered many tortures and torments in my life. I’ve had electric batons placed inside my mouth. I’ve been kicked and beaten until I longed to die. I’ve fasted 74 days without food or water. But I tell you from my heart that the most difficult thing I’ve ever experienced was seeing the condition of my family when they came to visit me in those days. They were all skin and bones from lack of food, were dressed in rags, and I could see they were all struggling terribly…. Every time my family visited me, the guards humiliated and insulted them… I asked [my son], ‘How is your school?’ but Isaac said, ‘Daddy, I want to go to school, but… the teacher doesn’t like me. She told the other children, “Isaac and his family stupidly believe in Jesus.” My classmates mock me and say, “Your father is a dirty criminal who deserves to be in prison.”’ … [The] guard… said, ‘Yun, if you really loved your children, you wouldn’t be here in prison.’ … My heart was cut… I tried to put on a brave face and told Isaac, ‘My child, your daddy dedicated you to the Lord when you were just a baby… We should be happy when people attack us and say bad things about us, because it is for Jesus’ sake.’”
In 2 Samuel 7:14, God speaks of administering discipline using “the rod of men and the stripes of the sons of men.” Brother Yun’s testimony is a current example of one way God has used the rod of men to discipline His children.
Another way God might train us is through allowing Satan to bring trouble to us like he did to Job and like He did to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 “And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you...” (NKJV)
But whether it is the buffeting of Satan or the stripes of the sons of men, whether O.T. Job or N.T. Paul or Modern-day brother Yun, it was for their spiritual growth5.
Two new variables complicate the translation process in v.7.
One is that a tradition popped up in the tenth century to drop the last letter off of the first word in Greek, changing the meaning from a statement of purpose to a hypothesis about a condition.
In other words, the KJV, which followed the Greek Orthodox tradition, starts v.7 with the word “If,”
but the NAS and ESV start the verse with the phrase “[It is] for...”
Neither creates a statement that doesn’t fit the theology of the rest of the Bible:
not giving up is good training in faith,
and, at the same time, not giving up is proof that you are one of God’s children.
A second complication in translating verse seven is that the way the Greek word for “endure/persevere” is spelled,
it could either be a command (as the NIV and I6 – and perhaps the ESV – interpreted it: “Hey y’all, you have to endure, so persevere!”)
or it could be a description (as the KJV & NAS translated it: “you endure”).
Once again, both interpretations are true to the rest of scripture, but I think that a command to endure (for the purpose of getting the most out of the training which you can receive in your relationship with God as your father) makes the most sense in this context.
The second phrase in this verse is literally “as to sons, to y’all, God is being offered.”
This verb which I translated “offered” (and other English versions translated “deals” or “treats”) is used 19 other times in the book of Hebrews,7 every time referring to the sacrifices “offered” by priests8.
This is what made me consider that this verb might be intended to connote priestly ministry on the part of God toward us. I think this is saying that when God disciplines you, He is presenting Himself to you as a father.
The proof is offered in the third and final clause of this verse: “for what son is there which a father does not train/chasten/discipline?”
Now, in a world as broken as ours, you can always point to a deadbeat dad who abandoned his children and didn’t lift a finger to train and discipline them, but we’re looking at a statement in the context of Biblical wisdom literature, and in that genre of literature, generalizations are the norm, and you’re supposed to look for ways to apply the general principle to your particular situation, not for ways to disprove the general principle by exceptions in your particular situation.
So what is the general principle? Fathers train and exercise corporal discipline on their sons. That’s what God has commanded them to do in the Proverbs9 and in Ephesians 6:4.
The argument is a fortiori, reasoning from the father-child relationship to the relationship between God and believers. “If no… prudent man... is to be found among us... who does not correct his children… how much less will God neglect so necessary a remedy, who is the best and the wisest Father?” (Calvin)
The application is that when someone is mean to you because you love Jesus or when non-Christians – or even sometimes well-meaning Christians – try to pressure you to stop following Jesus and promise that your life will be more comfortable if you give in to the world around you,
this is not a proof that God has abandoned you; this is God’s training camp, as it were.
Shrinking back in order to avoid the hardship would be to lose out on an opportunity of relating to God as your Father and would be effectively to renounce your status as His child because you want none of His training and discipline.
God’s calling at such points is to keep obeying Him, believing that God loves you, believing that His discipline is for the best, and believing that enduring this trial will strengthen your eternal relationship with Him.
"Those afflictions, which may be truly persecution as far as men are concerned in them, are fatherly rebukes and chastisements as far as God is concerned in them. Persecution for religion is sometimes a correction and rebuke for the sins of professors of religion. Men persecute them because they are religious; God chastises them because they are not more so: men persecute them because they will not give up their profession; God chastises them because they have not lived up to their profession." ~M. Henry
"[T]he persecutions which we endure for the Gospel’s sake, are... useful to us... because they are remedies to destroy sin; for in this way God keeps us under the yoke of his discipline, lest our flesh should become wanton; he sometimes also thus checks the impetuous, and sometimes punishes our sins, that we may in future be more cautious. Whether then he applies remedies to our sins, or anticipates us before we sin, he thus exercises us in the conflict with sin... With this honor indeed the Son of God favors us..." ~J. Calvin
I plan to continue on this subject in Hebrews, but let me wrap up today with Job’s testimony: Job 5:17 "Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty.” (NKJV)
Greek NT |
NAW |
KJV |
3 ἀναλογίσασθεB γὰρ τὸν τοιαύτην ὑπομεμενηκότα ὑπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν εἰς [ε]αὐτὸνC ἀντιλογίαν, ἵνα μὴ κάμητε ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶνD ἐκλυόμενοιE. |
3 Indeed, y’all must start thinking logically about the One who persevered through such antagonism under the agency of sinners toward Himself, in order that y’all might not continue to be weary, coming undone in your souls. |
3
For consider him that endured
such contradiction
of sinners against himself,
lest ye |
4 Οὔπω μέχριςF αἵματος ἀντικατέστητεG πρὸς τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἀντ-αγωνιζόμενοι.H |
4 Y’all have not yet stood up against this sin to the extent of bloodshed during your contesting, |
4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against X sin. |
5 καὶ ἐκλέλησθεI τῆς παρακλήσεως, ἥτις ὑμῖν ὡς υἱοῖς διαλέγεται· υἱέ μου, μὴ ὀλιγώ-ρει παιδείας Κυρίου, μηδὲ ἐκλύου ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἐλεγχόμενος.J |
5 and y’all have completely missed the exhortation which lectures to you as though to sons, “My son, don’t keep belittling the Lord’s training, and don’t keep coming undone when you are being reproved by Him, |
5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: |
6 ὃν γὰρ ἀγαπᾷ Κύριος παιδεύει, μαστιγοῖ δὲK πάντα υἱὸν ὃν παραδέχεται.L |
6 for it is the one whom the Lord loves that He trains, and He whips every son whom He accepts. |
6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. |
7 εἰςM παιδείαν ὑπομένετε, ὡς υἱοῖς ὑμῖν προσφέρεταιN ὁ Θεός· τίς γὰρ [ἐστιν]O υἱὸς ὃν οὐ παιδεύει πατήρ;P |
7 Keep persev-ering for the purpose of training. It is as to sons that God is being offered to y’all, for what son is there which a father does not train? |
7 If ye endure chastening, God X dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom [the] father chasteneth not? |
1According to Owen’s footnote in Calvin’s commentary, this very verse was used during the Protestant reformation as an argument against the Roman Catholic practice of denying the reading of scripture to laymen.
2cf. Chrysostom: “...murderers, robbers, sorcerers... are paying the penalty of their own wickedness, and are not scourged as sons, but punished as wicked: but ye as sons.”
3In Ephesians 6:4 God instructs earthly fathers to follow His example: “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." (NKJV)
4cf.
J. Chrysostom: “‘rebuked of Him.’ It follows that
these things are of God. For this too is no small matter of
consolation, when we learn that it is God’s work that
such things have power… See,
from that from which they supposed
they had been deserted [of God], from these he says they may be
confident, that they have not been deserted.”
cf.
J. Gill: “[E]very chastening, or afflictive providence, is
appointed by God, and is looked upon by believers, when grace is in
exercise, as coming from him; and it is directed, and governed, and
limited by him, and is overruled by him for his own glory, and their
good: and this is not to be despised, as something nauseous and
loathsome, or as not useful and unprofitable, or as insignificant
and unworthy of notice, but should be esteemed for the good ends,
which are sometimes answered, by it...”
5I am indebted to John Gill’s commentary on this verse for this application. He wrote, “[H]he suffers them sometimes to be scourged by men, and to be buffeted by Satan; and sometimes he scourges them himself with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men...”
6along with the Vulgate, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic
7Heb. 5:1, 3, 7; 8:3-4; 9:7, 9, 14, 25, 28; 10:1-2, 8, 11-12; 11:4, 17
8And it is spelled in the passive voice in Greek, not the active voice.
9e.g. 13:24, 22:15, 23:13
AThe
Greek is the Majority text, edited by myself to follow the majority
of the earliest-known manuscripts only when the early manuscript
evidence is practically unanimous. My original document includes
notes on the NKJV, NASB, NIV, & ESV English translations, but
since they are all copyrighted, I cannot include them in my online
document. Underlined words in English versions indicate a
standalone difference from all other English translations of a
certain word. Strikeout usually indicates that the
English translation is, in my opinion, too far outside the range of
meaning of the original Greek word. The addition of an X indicates a
Greek word left untranslated – or a plural Greek word
translated as an English singular. [Brackets] indicate words added
in English not in the Greek. {Pointed Braces} indicate words added
in Greek to the original. Key words are colored consistently across
the chart to show correlations.
BThis verb only occurs one other place in the Greek Bible, and that is Isaiah 44:19 (“And one has not considered in his mind, nor known in his understanding, that he has burnt up half of it in the fire, and baked loaves on the coals thereof and has roasted and eaten flesh, and of the rest of it he has made an abomination, and they worship it”). The three oldest-known Greek manuscripts all spell this verb in the infinitive rather than in the imperative, making it a reason for “fixing our eyes on Jesus” instead of a separate injunctive, but the encouragement to “consider Him” is still present either way, so it doesn’t make a difference essentially.
CTraditional Greek N.T.’s follow the majority of Greek manuscripts without an epsilon to the front of this word, giving it a more straightforward meaning of “him,” but 4 of the 5 oldest-known Greek manuscripts read with the epsilon, which doesn’t change the basic meaning, but does gives the word a more reflexive or emphatic shade of meaning “himself.” Some manuscripts also add a plural genitive ending to this word, changing the referent from Christ to sinners, indicating that it is to their own harm that sinners antagonize Christ, but that doesn’t seem to fit the context as well.
DPerhaps an allusion (with change of person) to Job’s despair in the midst of suffering: Job 10:1 κάμνων τῇ ψυχῇ μου… The only other instances of this verb in the Greek Bible are: Job 17:2 (perhaps a mistranslation) & James 5:15, where it stands in parallel with ἀσθενεῖ “sick/weak/infirm.” Apocryphal Greek sources describe this verb as battle-wearyness (4 Macc. 3:8), the infirmity of old age (4 Macc. 7:13 & Wis. 4:16), and the weariness of painstaking labor (Wisdom 15:9).
EThree (P45, P13, D06) out of the five oldest-known Greek manuscripts spell this participle in the perfect tense considering it as something happening earlier than the present and continuing in the present, which doesn’t really change the gist. It is also curious that no papyrus contains the 2nd person pronoun which modifies this word (again, this doesn’t change the meaning).
FA.T. Robertson’s Grammar p.645 The adverbial preposition μεχρις in this context has the notion of “measure” or “degree.”
GAlmost a compound of the antilogia of v.3 and the euperihistaton of v.1 Unsed only two other places in the Greek Bible: Deut. 31:21 (a song that will stand in witness against waywardness) and Josh. 5:7 (sons which stood after their fathers in succession).
HHapex Legomenon (in 4 Maccabees 17:14, describing the emperor fighting against believing Jews) cf. ἀγῶνα “race/ contest” in v.1
IHapex Legomenon. cf. the root without the prepositional prefix in Heb. 13:2 (entertaining angels "unawares"), 2 Pet. 3:5-8 (they are willingly "ignorant" … but don’t you be "ignorant"), and in the LXX Lev. 4:13, 5:3-15 (unintentional sins); Num. 5:13-27; 2Sam. 17:22; 2Sam. 18:13; Job 24:1, 28:21, 34:21, and Isa.40:26 (hidden sin).
JThis is an exact quote of the Septuagint of Prov. 3:11 except that the word “my” is added. (“My” is in the Hebrew of Prov. 3:11, but the last phrase of the MT is a little different from the LXX. Calvin suggests a very plausible reconciliation of that difference on the principle of ellipsis in his commentary in Appendix R2.) Prov. 3:11 is also the only other place that the verb oligwrew is to be found in the Greek Bible.
KA.T. Robertson’s Grammar p.1184: The conjunction δε in this verse is not adversative, but continuative, “and punishes.”
LThis is an exact quote of the Septuagint of Prov. 3:12.
MThe traditional Greek editions (Textus Receptus from 16th century Europe and Greek Orthodox Church editions from at least 1904 to the present) do not contain the final sigma on this word, changing its meaning from “into” to “if.” The sigma (“into”) is in all 4 known manuscripts from the first millennium (not counting the Chester-Beatty Papyrus which only contains the second half of this verse), and the majority of second millennium manuscripts also have sigma, so it is kept in the contemporary critical editions of the GNT. The preposition here is considered causal “for the purpose of” (L&N#89.57) by grammarians.
NRobinson tagged this verb passive, A.T. Robertson tagged is as middle “bearing oneself towards.” Active forms also occur in Hebrews.
OThis verb of being is missing in the three oldest-known manuscripts (again,not counting P46), as well as in 3 later manuscripts, but is written in the vast majority of manuscripts dating back as far as the 6th century. Since verbs of being are so frequently not written out but assumed, this makes no difference in meaning.
PTurner’s Grammar p.174: Notice the anarthrous construction with ΄υιος… πατηρ (and it is not ‘ο πατηρ, “his father”), “a father” (cf. Blass & Debrunner p.257[3]); “what son is there whom his father, as a father, does not chasten?”).