Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Colossians 3:21
Fathers, provoke not your children [to anger,] lest they be discouraged.
21. Fathers ] We may (as in Eph 6:4, where see note) equally well render Parents. Cp. Heb 11:23, in the Greek. Still, the father is the natural representative of the dual parental authority.
provoke not to wrath ] Chafe, irritate. The Greek word is as old as Homer (e.g. Iliad, i. 32, iv. 5), who almost always uses it of provocation to combat. Unwise, unloving, parental despotism, exacting, needlessly chiding, interposing for the sake of interposition, is a fatally sure challenge to the child’s will. The Christian father should handle that will as kindly as firmly.
be discouraged ] Lose hope, the hope of pleasing, the animating expectation of doing right and so winning the “well done” of love. The eternal Father “upbraideth not” (Jas 1:5; cp. Isa 57:16). Luther has here, auf dass sie nicht scheu werden.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Fathers, provoke not … – Notes, Eph 6:4.
Lest they be discouraged – Lest, by your continually finding fault with them, they should lose all courage, and despair of ever pleasing you. There is much sound sense and practical wisdom in this observation of the apostle. Children should not be flattered, but they should be encouraged. They should not be so praised as to make them vain and proud, but they should be commended when they do well. The desire of praise should not be the principle from which they should be taught to act, but they should feel that the approbation of parents is a desirable thing, and when they act so as to deserve that approbation, no injury is done them by their understanding it. He who always finds fault with a child; who is never satisfied with what he does; who scolds and frets and complains, let him do as he will, breaks his spirit, and soon destroys in the delicate texture of his soul all desire of doing well. The child in despair soon gives over every effort to please. He becomes sullen, morose, stupid, and indifferent to all the motives that can be presented to him, and becomes to a great extent indifferent as to what he does – since all that he does meets with the same reception from the parent.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 21. Fathers, provoke not] See Clarke on Eph 6:4.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Fathers, provoke not your children to anger: and to moderate the parental authority, that they may exercise it Christianly, he allows not parents to do that which is in a direct tendency to irritate or move the passions of their children merely for their own pleasure, without a principal regard to Gods glory, and their childrens profit, Heb 12:10. Indeed, he seems here more strictly to guard fathers against mal-administration of their power in this extreme than he doth elsewhere, when writing upon the same subject, Eph 6:4, considering the original word he here puts the negative upon, to engage them to lay aside rigour in their government, (as well as unwarrantable indulgence), and that upon a very weighty reason, drawn from the end, viz.
lest they be discouraged; lest some children, who might with a moderate hand be reduced to obedience, should be (as it were) dispirited, by the roughness of their fathers discipline, and even pine away with grief, or grow desperate.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
21. (Eph6:4.) It is a different Greek verb, therefore translatehere, “irritate not.” By perpetual fault-finding”children” are “discouraged” or “disheartened.”A broken-down spirit is fatal to youth [BENGEL].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Fathers, provoke not your children to anger,….
[See comments on Eph 6:4].
lest they be discouraged; or disheartened and dispirited; their spirits be broke through grief and trouble, and they become indolent, sluggish, and unfit for business; or, despairing of having any share in the affections of their parents, disregard their commands, instructions, and corrections, and grow obdurate, stubborn, and rebellious.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Provoke not ( ). Present imperative of old verb from , to excite. Only twice in N.T., here in bad sense, in good sense in 2Co 9:2 (to stimulate). Here it means to nag and as a habit (present tense).
That they be not discouraged ( ). Negative purpose ( ) with the present subjunctive (continued discouragement) of , old verb, but only here in N.T., from (dispirited, privative, , spirit or courage). One does not have to read Jane Eyre or Oliver Twist to know something of the sorrows of childhood as is witnessed by runaway children and even child suicides.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Provoke to anger [] . Only here and 2Co 9:2, where it is used of stirring up to good works. To anger is added by A. V. Be discouraged (ajqumwsin). Only here in the New Testament. Lose heart, or become dispirited.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Fathers, provoke not your children to anger” (hoi pateres me erethizete ta tekna humon) ye fathers provoke not your little children;” to or toward anger, bitterness, resentment, Eph 6:4. To provoke or prod one to anger is forbidden in the Scriptures and causes both the one provoking and the one provoked to sin, Pro 15:1; Pro 20:2-3; Col 3:8.
2) “Lest they be discouraged” (hina me athumosin) “In order that they not be disheartened,” or discouraged at seeing their parents so difficult to please, Num 32:9; Deu 1:28. A sower of or an incitement to discouragement, in disobedience to the Lord, is a grave sin. Deu 1:21; Num 21:4; Isa 42:4.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(21) Provoke not . . . to anger.This, in the text followed by our version, is borrowed from Eph. 6:4. The true reading is provoke to emulation, as in 2Co. 9:2. What is forbidden is a constant and restless stimulation, spurring the willing horse; which will end in failure and despondency.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
21. Provoke not Do not irritate your children, by unreasonableness, undue severity, perpetual faultfinding, or passionate speech and conduct.
Many a child becomes discouraged in the performance of his filial duty, and reckless of results, by the sad home treatment to which he is subjected. And if he be ruined forever, a share of the responsibility belongs to the irritating father.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Fathers (or ‘parents’), do not provoke (or ‘irritate’) your children, so that they are not discouraged.’
‘Fathers’. The word means ‘parents’ in Heb 11:23, so could mean that here. ‘Do not provoke’ by unnecessary or interminable commands. The bringing up of children requires tact and patience if the children are not to be put off and discouraged. Parents should remember that they are forming and fashioning lives.
Sternness will also be required, and even sometimes physical punishment, but it should never be vindictive or excessive or dispensed when out of control, and only when really necessary. Bull-headedness is out. Indeed much teaching should be given by example. This is more likely to be followed than undiscussed and unexplained orders. The fact is that in many cases our children will become what we are, not what we have told them to be.
‘Lest they be discouraged.’ Too many instructions, too many ‘don’ts’, too exacting a standard will only lead to discouragement, rebellion and reluctant eye-service. Not enough instruction will lead to doubt and uncertainty, and even despair. Children need to know what they should do, but also why they should do it or not do it. They are common sense creatures.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
21 Fathers, provoke not your children to anger , lest they be discouraged.
Ver. 21. Provoke not your children ] See Trapp on “ Eph 6:4 “
Lest they be discouraged ] , dispirited, and through despondency grow desperate in their resolutions.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
21 .] See on Eph 6:4 , for .
. ] do not irritate them , . , Chrys. In ., it is assumed that the result of such irritation will be to cause repeated punishment, and so eventual desperation, on the part of the child. It would be well if all who have to educate children took to heart Bengel’s remark here; ‘ , fractus animus , pestis juventutis.’ Wetst. quotes from neas Tacticus, .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Col 3:21 . : i.e. , irritate by exacting commands and perpetual faultfinding and interference for interference, sake. The consequence of such foolish exercise of authority is that the child becomes discouraged; in other words, his spirit is broken, and since what he does leads to constant blame, he loses hope of ever being able to please. “Fractus animus pestis juventutis” (Beng.).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
provoke. See 2Co 9:2.
lest = in order that (Greek. hina) . . . not (App-105).
be discouraged = have their spirit broken. Greek. athumeo. Only here.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
21.] See on Eph 6:4, for .
.] do not irritate them- , . , Chrys. In ., it is assumed that the result of such irritation will be to cause repeated punishment, and so eventual desperation, on the part of the child. It would be well if all who have to educate children took to heart Bengels remark here; , fractus animus, pestis juventutis. Wetst. quotes from neas Tacticus, .
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Col 3:21.[28] , lest they be discouraged) , despondency (a broken-down spirit), the bane of youth.
[28] , the fathers) The husband is the head of the wife; wherefore power is principally attributed to the fathers.-V. g.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Col 3:21
Col 3:21
Fathers, provoke not your children.-Parents ought not to be hard to please, severe, and harsh. It disheartens them, and
makes them bitter and rebellious.-No more sacred or important duty was ever committed to mortals than that of nurturing and training children to the Lord. Parents owe it to the children and their everlasting well-being to train them for the Lord. In no point of duty are Christians more negligent than in training them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They should be trained from the beginning to obey, but with love. Sympathy and encouragement should be shown.
that they be not discouraged.-Under protracted irritation the child is likely to become despondent, hopeless, sullen, losing all courage and spirit and giving up all effort to obey, and finally become reckless. They should not be fretted, but they should be encouraged and commended when they do well. [They should be trained as to make them feel that the approbation of parents la a desirable thing, and when they act so as to deserve that approbation, it encourages them to know it. He who always finds fault with a child, who is never satisfied with what he does, who scolds, and frets, and complains, let him do what he will, breaks the spirit, and even destroys all desire of doing well The child, in despair, soon gives up every effort to please.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Psa 103:13, Pro 3:12, Pro 4:1-4, Eph 6:4, 1Th 2:11, Heb 12:5-11
Reciprocal: Col 3:19 – bitter
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
(Col 3:21.) -Ye fathers, do not provoke your children. [Eph 6:4.] Authorities of no mean note give us , a reading adopted by Griesbach, Scholz, and Lachmann, but which might slip into the text from Eph 6:4, though, certainly, it is found in A, C, D1, E1, F, G. The verb, as in 1Ma 15:40, Deu 21:20, is to irritate, to fret, to rouse to anger, and not, as in 2Co 9:2, to stir up to emulation. Fathers are spoken to since training is their duty, and because this peculiar sin which the apostle condemns is one to which they, and not mothers, are peculiarly liable. The paternal government must be one of kindness, without caprice; and of equity, without favouritism. The term includes greatly more than what Burton understands by it-do not carry their punishment too far. The child, when chastised, should feel that the punishment is not the result of fretful anger; and when it obeys, its obedience should not be prompted, or rather forced, by menaced infliction. If children, let them do what they can, never please their father, if they are teazed and irritated by perpetual censure, if they are kept apart by uniform sternness, if other children around them are continually held up as immeasurably their superiors, if their best efforts can only moderate the parental frown, but never are greeted with the parental smile, then their spirit is broken, and they are discouraged.
Against this sad result the apostle warns-
-Lest they be disheartened. The composition of the verb shows its strong signification. Children teazed and irritated lose heart, renounce every endeavour to please, or render at best but a soulless obedience. The verb occurs only here in the New Testament, but is found in the Septuagint, 1Ki 1:16, etc., and in several of the classical authors. What the apostle guards against has been often witnessed, with its deplorable consequences. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, he speaks more fully, and enjoins the positive mode of tuition-but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The young spirit is to be carefully and tenderly developed, and not crushed by harsh and ungenerous treatment. Too much is neither to be demanded nor expected. The twig is to be bent with caution, not broken in the efforts of a rude and hasty zeal. Approbation is as necessary to the child as counsel, and promise as indispensable as warning and reproof. Gisborne on this place well says-To train up children as servants of God, as soldiers of Jesus Christ, for a future existence in preference to the present life; to instruct and habituate them, in conformity with their baptismal vow, to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to live not unto themselves but to that Redeemer who died for them; this is universally the grand duty of a parent. This well-known duty the apostle, though he does not name it, presupposes as acknowledged and felt by the Colossians. In the discharge of this duty, and in every step of their proceedings, he directs them to beware, as parents, of provoking their children to anger; that is to say, as the original term evidently implies, of exercising their own authority with irritating unkindness, with needless and vexatious severity; of harassing their children by capricious commands and restrictions; of showing groundless dissatisfaction, and scattering unme rited reproof. To act thus, the apostle declares, would be so far from advancing the religious improvement of children, that it would discourage them. It would not only deaden their affections towards their parents, but would dispirit their exertions, and check their desires after holiness.
Following the same order of thought as in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the apostle next turns him to the other members of the household, the slaves. It is probable that the false philosophy inculcated, with regard to them, certain notions of freedom which were not merely unattainable, but the belief of which might only aggravate the essential hardness of their lot. Steiger has referred to the fact that the Pharisees gave a special prominence to political freedom (Joh 8:33), and he says, drawing his authority from Philo, that the Essenes held a doctrine which would, if carried out to practice, lead to a philanthropic revolution. At all events, they condemned slave-masters as not only unjust, but impious, and destroyers of a law of nature- . The false teachers, if they held similar views, might inculcate this abstract doctrine, which, whatever its inherent truth, could not in those days lead to anything but discord and bloodshed. The apostle, on the other hand, applied himself to things as they were, and while he attempted to moderate an evil which he could not subvert, he laid down those principles, by the spread of which social bondage first was shorn of its grievances, and then lost its very existence. We have already stated, under Eph 6:5-8, the relation in which the gospel stood to the slaves, how it raised them to spiritual brotherhood, and gave them a conscious freedom which chains and oppression could not subvert. It so trained them, and so tutored their Christian masters, that slavery in a Christian household must have existed only in name, and the name itself was ready to disappear as soon as society was leavened with the spirit of Christianity.
The injunctions here delivered are much the same as those in the Epistle to the Ephesians. The reader is invited to turn to the prefatory remarks to our comment on Eph 6:5. The apostle does not speak vaguely, but hits upon those vices which slavery is so apt to engender-indolence, eye-service, and reluctance in labour.
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians
Col 3:21. The words to anger are not in the primary definition given by the lexicon. Provoke means to irritate one’s children in a way that will discourage them. It does not oppose proper disciplining of them, even though such correction may be unpleasant. I/t should be considered in the light of Heb 12:11.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Col 3:21. Fathers; as representing the ultimate household authority, and hence as especially needing this caution.
Provoke not your children; or, do not irritate your children. To anger is an unnecessary addition; the term used in Ephesians is different. Severe, unjust, capricious treatment is forbidden.
That they be not disheartened; this is the certain result of such treatment. Bengel: a broken spirit, the bane of youth. The child feels: I can never satisfy my father. Affection and confidence are destroyed, or at least cease to act as motives. Obedience becomes soulless, and the child loses its moral discrimination, and finally becomes reckless. The history of too many brought up in nominally Christian families. Comp. the positive precept; bring them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord (Eph 6:4). Our heavenly Father, the Father of our spirits, Himself carefully guards against our becoming disheartened under His chastisement, and nothing rejoices Him more than that we cast not away our confidence; and so also in the relations of parents and children, much depends upon our not being rendered morose by the faults, but taking courage as to final triumph (Rieger).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Here the parents duty, that is the duty of both parents, is laid down, provoke not your children to wrath; that is, abuse not your power and authority over them, by being too severe unto them; imbitter not their spirits against you, by denying them what is convenient for them, by inveighing with bitter words against them, by unjust, unseasonable, or immoderate correcting of them; give them no just occasion to be angry.
The reason is added, lest they be discouraged; either dispirited and heartless, or desperate and hardened; lest by dejection of spirit, they become stupid. A parent’s conduct must be moderated with prudence, shunning the extremes of too much indulgence on the one hand, and too great rigour and severity on the other.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Verse 21
Provoke not your children, &c.; that is, in all things deal with them gently and tenderly.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
“Fathers, provoke not your children [to anger], lest they be discouraged.”
This is not to say that the kids aren’t going to get upset with you from time to time, but the attempt not to bring them to real anger is to be the fathers goal – mom’s too, if they are in on the discipline/training.
If they do get angry it isn’t the end of the world as they will only be discouraged. If you do bring them to anger then it is high time that you ENCOURAGE THEM on the spot so that they do not wallow in discouragement. This is what leads to depression and oft times other troubles.
Provoke seems to relate to nagging rather than the one time incident when you ask them to do something.
Stedman lists three areas where fathers can irritate their child. He has gleaned this list from observing many families in his fairly large church over many years.
1. Ignoring the child
2. Indulging the child
3. Insulting the child
I think a little thinking on these items by most any father would bring them to agree with his listing.
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
3:21 {13} Fathers, provoke not your children [to anger], lest they be discouraged.
(13) Of parents, that they are gentle towards their children.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
While children must obey both parents, the father (pateron) has the primary responsibility for his children as head of the household. For this reason Paul addressed the fathers here. What is in view here is the habitual provoking of children by insensitive parents, especially fathers. Some provocation is necessary in disciplining, but ceaseless irritation causes children to become discouraged, sullen, angry, and even hateful.
"Paul may have had in mind the regimen of ’don’ts’ that loomed so large in the Colossian heresy." [Note: Vaughan, p. 219.]