Bible verses about raising children describe how God intends faith, character and wisdom to grow in a child from the earliest years. Scripture points to examples like young Samuel and Timothy, and even to Jesus growing in wisdom and stature. These passages show what children need from those who raise them: teaching, correction, welcome and a living example of trust in God.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6 (KJV)
Training a child in the way he should go is tied to the lasting direction of his life.
Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19 (KJV)
God’s words are to be laid up in the heart and taught to children when sitting at home and walking by the way.
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Ephesians 6:4 (KJV)
Raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is contrasted with provoking them to anger.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
Luke 2:52 (KJV)
Jesus himself grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man, a model of whole-person growth.
And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord, and also with men.
1 Samuel 2:26 (KJV)
Young Samuel grew on and was in favour with the Lord and with people, showing faith taking root early.
When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.
2 Timothy 1:5 (KJV)
Timothy’s sincere faith first lived in his grandmother and mother, showing how faith is passed down in families.
The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
Proverbs 29:15 (KJV)
Correction gives wisdom, while a child left entirely to himself brings his mother to shame.
As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory.
1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 (KJV)
Paul describes encouraging and charging believers as a father does his own children, urging them to walk worthy of God.
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Psalms 127:3-5 (KJV)
Children are a heritage from the Lord, likened to arrows shaped and sent out by a skilled hand.
And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.
Mark 10:13-16 (KJV)
When the disciples turned children away, Jesus was displeased, welcomed them and blessed them.
Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Psalms 34:11 (KJV)
The psalmist calls children to come and listen so he can teach them the fear of the Lord.
Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
Joel 1:3 (KJV)
Each generation is told to pass on the story of God’s works to the next.
And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.
Exodus 12:26-27 (KJV)
When children ask what the Passover means, parents are to explain what God has done for his people.
The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.
Isaiah 38:19 (KJV)
The father to the children shall make known God’s truth, a clear statement of the parent’s teaching role.
Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.
Proverbs 17:6 (KJV)
Grandchildren are the crown of old men, and parents are the glory of their children, linking the generations.
Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law. For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.
Proverbs 4:1-4 (KJV)
A father shares the wisdom he received from his own father, urging his children to keep it.
Scripture treats raising children as passing on a story. In Exodus 12:26-27, children ask what the Passover means, and parents answer by telling what God has done. Joel 1:3 and Psalms 34:11 carry the same idea: children come to know the Lord as adults faithfully explain his works and his ways.
The Bible also shows that raising children involves both nurture and correction. Proverbs 29:15 encourages loving guidance while a child is still young, and Ephesians 6:4 insists that this be done in a way that does not provoke or embitter. The aim is not control but a heart that knows God.
Examples in Scripture bring this to life. Hannah dedicated Samuel to the Lord, and 1 Samuel 2:26 says he grew in favour with God and people. Luke 2:52 records that Jesus grew in wisdom, stature and favour. Growth in body, mind and spirit is the full picture of raising a child well.
Ephesians 6:4’s pairing of “nurture and admonition” suggests raising children well requires both encouragement and correction together.
Some of the same ground is covered in Bible Verses For Children and Bible Verses For Love and Relationships.
All Scripture here is quoted from the King James Version, which you can read in full at Blue Letter Bible.
This subject overlaps with Bible Verses About Overcoming Depression and with Bible Verses About Patience.
Readers of this page often go on to Bible Verses About Baptism or Bible Verses About Work.
Bible Verses About Peace During Difficult Times and Bible Verses About Prayer and Protection are good companions to this page.
Bible Verses About Children's Protection and Bible Verses For Raising Children explore related themes.
Bible Gateway makes it easy to compare a verse across several English translations.
Bible Hub offers commentary and cross-references for each verse.
Raising children, biblically, requires both nurture and correction together, not one without the other.
These verses were never meant to sit on a page as decoration \u2014 they’re meant to shape how you actually respond the next time you’re trying to raise children who are kind in a world that often isn’t.
You don’t need polished or formal language for it \u2014 an honest, plainly worded sentence is enough, something as simple as telling God directly for wisdom to shape their character, not just their behavior.
When Jesus was twelve, Mary and Joseph traveled home from Jerusalem for a full day before realizing he was not with the group, then spent three anxious days searching before finding him in the temple, listening to and questioning the teachers there (Luke 2:41-46). Even faithful, attentive parents lost track of their child for a time, and their fear during that search was completely real and understandable.
When they found him, Jesus gently reminded them that he needed to be about his Father’s business, yet Luke notes that he then went home with them and was subject to them (Luke 2:49-51). Bible verses about raising children include this account precisely because it shows a child with a unique calling still living in ordinary obedience at home.
The mother of James and John came to Jesus asking that her two sons might sit on his right and left hand in his coming kingdom, a request driven by love for her children but shaped by worldly ambition (Matthew 20:20-21). Jesus gently redirected her, explaining that greatness in his kingdom looks like serving rather than being served by others.
Her request is a familiar temptation for any parent: wanting the best possible position for a child, even if it means asking for status rather than character. Bible verses about raising children caution against measuring a child’s future mainly by status or advantage.
Deborah described herself as one who arose as a mother in Israel during a time when the nation had grown weak and leaderless (Judges 5:7). Her mothering was not limited to her own household; it extended to guiding, judging and strengthening an entire generation of God’s people through a genuinely difficult season.
Her example broadens what raising children can mean. Bible verses about raising children are not only for parents inside their own four walls; they also describe the mentors, teachers and leaders who help shape the next generation’s courage and faith.
When Sarah asked Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away, Scripture says the matter was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son (Genesis 21:11). Even though he obeyed God’s instruction to listen to Sarah, his grief over his own child was not hidden or dismissed by the text at all.
God comforted Abraham by promising that he would also make a nation of Ishmael, because he was Abraham’s son (Genesis 21:12-13). Bible verses about raising children do not pretend blended or complicated family situations are simple; they show a father’s real grief taken seriously by God, even within a hard and messy situation, a theme also explored in Bible Verses About Children’s Protection.
Mordecai took his young cousin Esther, whose parents had died, and raised her as his own daughter (Esther 2:7). Even after she was taken into the king’s palace, Mordecai walked every day in front of the court of the women’s house to learn how Esther fared and what was happening to her (Esther 2:11).
His steady, daily attentiveness continued long after Esther left his direct care, showing that raising a child well does not stop once they move into a new stage of life away from home. Bible verses about raising children include this kind of ongoing, watchful love from someone who was not even Esther’s biological parent.
Every story here, from Mary and Joseph’s frantic search to Mordecai’s daily visits outside the palace walls, points to the same quiet truth: raising a child well is rarely about getting everything right on the very first attempt. It is about staying present, staying honest, and continuing to show up long after a mistake, a hard season, or a child’s move into an unfamiliar new stage of life that no one fully prepared you for in advance, and choosing to keep showing up anyway.
Lord, thank you for the children you have placed in my life to raise, teach or simply influence in some way. Give me Mary and Joseph’s honesty about the moments I feel like I have lost track of what matters most for my child.
Keep my ambition for my children rooted in character rather than status, unlike the request made by James and John’s mother. And give me, like Deborah and Mordecai, a willingness to help raise up courage and faith in whatever young people cross my path, not only my own children. In Jesus’ name, amen.
It is easy to assume raising children well means never losing track of them, physically or otherwise, and always knowing exactly what they need in every moment. Mary and Joseph, about as faithful as parents get in Scripture, still lost Jesus for three days and had to search anxiously to find him.
Bible verses about raising children do not promise a mistake-free process. They describe attentive, imperfect people continuing to search, ask questions and stay engaged even after getting something wrong, which is a far more realistic picture of parenting than flawless control ever could be.
These Bible verses about raising children reward slow reading, one passage a day rather than skimming them all at once in a hurry.
Sit with these Bible verses about raising children by answering a few honest questions this week.
Turning Bible verses about raising children into daily habits matters more than reading them once and moving on with your day.
Moses told Israel to fix God’s words in their hearts, and then he got very specific about where the teaching should happen: “speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 11:19). Nothing in that list is a classroom. It is a couch, a sidewalk, a bedside and a breakfast table. The instruction assumes that faith gets handed down in the gaps of the day, in the ten minutes before the school bus, not only in a scheduled lesson.
I know a grandmother who taught her grandchildren the Twenty-third Psalm entirely while driving them to swim practice. One line per red light. By the end of the season the youngest could recite it, and none of them remembered it as a lesson. That is the picture here. You don’t need a polished devotional plan to start; you need the willingness to say a true sentence about God out loud when a rainbow shows up, when a pet dies, or when a child asks why the neighbor is sad. Some days the conversation will fizzle and a ten-year-old will stare at the ceiling. Keep going anyway. Seed is rarely visible the week it is sown.
Paul’s second letter to Timothy contains one of the warmest sentences a pastor ever wrote about a family: “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also” (2 Timothy 1:5). Unfeigned means without pretending. Paul had watched Timothy long enough to know the difference between borrowed religion and the real thing, and he traced the real thing back through two women.
There is a quiet detail worth catching. Acts 16:1 tells us Timothy’s father was a Greek, which likely means the home was not united in belief. Lois and Eunice did their teaching without the backing of a whole household. That should encourage any parent who is raising children alone in the faith, or alongside a spouse who doesn’t share it, or as a grandparent stepping in when the middle generation is absent. Timothy’s story suggests that steady, sincere example from even one or two adults can take root, and that it may take decades before the person it was meant for is old enough to say thank you. Paul said it for them, in a letter that has lasted two thousand years.
Mark records a scene that the disciples handled badly. Parents were bringing little children to Jesus so that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked the parents, most likely thinking the Teacher had more important matters to attend to. Mark says Jesus was much displeased. He said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Then he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them and blessed them (Mark 10:16).
Anyone who has tried to finish a work email with a child tugging at one sleeve knows how easily a small person becomes an interruption. The scene does not scold the busy. It does show where Jesus placed children in his order of priorities, which was not at the back of the line. A parent might read it on a hard evening and ask what a blessing from their own hands would look like tonight: a hand on a head at bedtime, a short prayer by name, a few honest words about what you appreciate in this particular kid. The disciples learned that day that welcome costs a few minutes and gives something no schedule can.
Proverbs 4 opens with a father speaking to his sons, and he does something clever. Before he gives instructions, he reminds them where his authority comes from: “For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live” (Proverbs 4:3-4). In other words, the teaching he is passing along was handed to him. He is a link in a chain, not the author of it.
That small admission is useful for parents who feel like they are inventing everything from scratch. You are probably repeating, or deliberately reversing, things your own parents did. Some of us inherited bedtime stories and a father who whistled in the garage; others inherited silence or shouting. The proverb doesn’t demand a perfect childhood. It invites you to sort through what you received, keep what helped you live, and say plainly to your child where you plan to do things differently. That honesty is a gift. A child who hears “my dad did it this way, and here is what I want to try” learns that people can grow, and that inherited habits can be examined rather than simply obeyed.
Proverbs 29:15 is one of the verses people reach for quickly and misuse easily: “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” The second half is not hard to follow. A child with no guidance, no boundaries and no one willing to say no does not grow wiser by default. Anyone who has watched a toddler near a staircase understands that love sometimes has to say stop.
The first half takes more care. In the shepherd’s world the rod was a tool for guiding and defending a flock, the same instrument Psalm 23:4 pairs with the staff as a comfort. Reproof is spoken correction, and the verse puts the two side by side because correction is meant to produce wisdom, not fear. Nothing in this proverb gives a parent license to injure a child or to discipline in rage, and Paul’s counsel in the same neighborhood of Scripture is plain that fathers should not provoke their children to wrath (Ephesians 6:4). If you grew up with harsh punishment and find yourself repeating it, or worry that you might, please reach out to a pastor, counselor or family doctor. Asking for help is a form of obedience to the verse, because wisdom is the goal.
Paul reminded the church in Thessalonica how he had treated them: “As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, that ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12). Look at the phrase every one of you. A good father in that picture does not address the children as a crowd. He pulls up a chair beside each one, because the shy child needs coaxing, the stubborn one needs a firm word, and the eldest sometimes just needs to be asked what she thinks.
The three verbs are worth keeping apart. To exhort is to urge someone toward what is good, usually with your arm around them. To comfort is to stay near when things have gone wrong, even if you cannot fix them. To charge is to state plainly what is expected and why it matters. A home that only exhorts turns into a pep rally, one that only comforts can drift without direction, and one that only charges becomes cold. Most parents are naturally strong in one of the three and thin in another. It might be worth asking your spouse, or an honest friend, which verb your children hear least from you, and then practicing that one this month.
Keep exploring with these related pages: Bible Verses For Raising Children, Bible Verses About Protection for Children, Bible Verses About Children, Bible Verses for Children's and Bible Verses For Protection for Children.
For deeper study, Bible Gateway, Bible Hub and Bible Study Tools are all free to use.
Scripture treats raising children as passing on a story. In Exodus 12:26-27, children ask what the Passover means, and parents answer by telling what God has done.
This page brings together 16 King James Version references about raising Children, drawn from 12 different books of the Bible.
These raising Children verses are drawn from books including Exodus, Joel, Psalms, Proverbs, Ephesians, among others.
Yes. The verses about raising Children gathered here include passages from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, such as Exodus 12:26 and Ephesians 6:4.
Exodus 12:26 is one of the verses about raising Children referenced in this collection, alongside Joel 1:3.
