One of the passages of Scripture that tells us of God’s perspective on children is Psalm 127:3-5. Three words are used in reference to children in these verses. The first is the word gift in many English translations, as in: gift of the LORD – they are from Him! But not gift as we often think of it. The Hebrew word is more specifically a possession or inheritance. In other words, our children belong to God, not to the State or even to us, but God gives them to us as an inheritance – as a stewardship that He is entrusting to the parents for a time, and for whom the parents will give an account.
The second word is reward, a Hebrew word that refers to wages (from the verb to hire). It’s a reward from God. The fruit of the womb is a reward is a poetic couplet reinforcing the previous idea of children being a trust given to their parents by God. As such they are precious and to be valued, nurtured, and uniquely trained by the specific parents to whom God gave them, and then returned to God for His purposes. That’s where the third word comes in. Children are like arrows – like arrows in the hand of a warrior (verse 4). The term for warrior refers to a mighty warrior, and fits the larger context of the entire psalm that speaks primarily to fathers; and the word for children is not gender neutral but refers to sons. Some would object to the language of this passage, but it is the word of God, not the word of man. And the big idea here is that fathers are to aim their arrows at targets that reflect God’s purposes for them. It should not escape any of us in our day that the State (and many other entities) would love to steal our arrows and use them for their own godless purposes. Verse 5 even speaks of them being part of God’s defense of His people in the city gate; the place where all legal, economic, and political issues of the community were settled. But it requires that as fathers, we see our children as God’s unique stewardship given to us to train and aim at God-worthy targets, rather than allow another to aim them.