What does “like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children” mean for parents?

Rabbi Landau explains that the verse is about how a warrior handles an arrow. “The warrior doesn’t throw the arrow. He draws it close and from that closeness it flies.” That, he says, is how children are raised.

A bow and arrow, he points out, has a strange rule: the closer you pull the arrow toward yourself, the further it travels. A parent who wants a child to go far doesn’t start by throwing him forward. The parent starts by drawing the child near.

So the closeness that can look like holding a child back is really part of sending him out. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that King David chose the arrow as his picture of a child, and that “what looks like ‘backward’ is the true ‘forward.’”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

The warrior does not throw the arrow; he draws it close, and from there it flies.

Deepest human truth

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that an arrow’s power “does not come from pushing,” and that a child’s strength to fly comes from the bond with the parent.

More questions from this teaching

• How do you help a child go far in life without pushing them?