Shebet is the shepherd's staff. It counts the flock, it fends off the predator, it steers the wandering sheep back to the path. When David says in Psalm 23, your rod and your staff comfort me, this is the word, and comfort is the point. The shepherd's shebet is not how you hurt a sheep; it is how you keep one alive. So when Proverbs says the one who spares the shebet hates his son, the picture is a parent who refuses to guide, not a parent who refuses to strike. Spare the rod, spoil the child is not even Scripture; it is a line from a 1662 poem. The Hebrew was always about engaged, protective direction. The theology of hitting children was read into a shepherd's staff.