rod and staff

Rods were also used to punish wayward children, slaves, fools or misbehaving adults. The RSV uses the image for discipline administered by human authorities approximately a dozen times (with nine of the references coming in the book of Proverbs) and for the oppression of a foreign nation four times (Is 9:4; 10:24; 14:29; Mic 5:1). Paul asks the Corinthians whether he should come to them “with a rod [in a mood of anger and reproof], or with love in a spirit of gentleness” (1 Cor 4:21 RSV). God’s punishment, anger or rule is pictured by the rod approximately a dozen times, with the books of Isaiah and Revelation containing a preponderance of the references. Here the rod becomes an image of ultimate terror, as in references to God’s breaking the rebellious kings of the earth “with a rod of iron” (Ps 2:9; cf. Rev 2:27; 19:15), as well as God’s speaking of “the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury” (Is 10:5 RSV).
But the rod and staff can also be images of comfort, protection and security. This is preeminently true of the shepherd’s rod and staff. One of these was the familiar crook, used for disciplining a wandering sheep, encircling a sheep’s neck or belly to rescue it from a gully and laying across the backs of sheep for purposes of counting (the so-called rodding of the sheep) as they entered the sheepfold (Lev 27:32; Ezek 20:37). The other half of the “rod and staff” pair was a clublike weapon used for warding off predators. The picture has been rendered forever famous by the detail in Psalm 23 that in the valley of deepest darkness, the place of treacherous gullies and lurking predators, the sheep will “fear no evil; … thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me” (Ps 23:4 RSV).