Proverbs 29:21

If ¹  someone pampers his servant from youth, he will be a weakling ²  in the end.

If a man pampers his servant from youth, he will bring grief in the end.

He who pampers his slave from childhood Will in the end find him to be a son.

A servant who is pampered from childhood will later become a rebel.

If you let people treat you like a doormat, you'll be quite forgotten in the end.

If a servant is gently cared for from his early years, he will become a cause of sorrow in the end.

A slave pampered from childhood will come to a bad end.

He who pampers his servant from childhood Will have him as a son in the end.

If ¹  someone pampers his servant from youth, he will be a weakling ²  in the end.

¹ tn There is no conditional particle at the beginning of the verse; however, the relationship of the clauses, which lay down the condition first and then (with a vav) the consequences, indicates a conditional construction here. Cf. also NAB, NIV, NCV, TEV.

² tn The word מָגוֹן (magon) is a hapax legomenon; accordingly, it has been given a variety of interpretations. The LXX has “grief,” and this has been adopted by some versions (e.g., NIV, NCV). The idea would be that treating the servant too easily for so long would not train him at all, so he will be of little use, and therefore a grief. J. Reider takes the word to mean “weakling” from the Arabic root na’na (“to be weak”), with a noun/adjective form muna’ana’ (“weak; feeble”); see his “Etymological Studies in Biblical Hebrew,” VT 4 [1954]: 276-95. This would give a different emphasis to the sentence, but on the whole not very different than the first. In both cases the servant will not be trained well. Rashi, a Jewish scholar who lived a.d. 1040-1105, had the translation “a master.” The servant trained this way will assume authority in the household even as the son. This may be behind the KJV translation “son” (likewise ASV, NASB). Tg. Prov 29:21 and the Syriac have “to be uprooted,” which may reflect a different text entirely.