Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
All Commentaries on Proverbs 22:6 Go To Proverbs 22
Bede
AD 735
It is well known that the Lord grants a great many in their old age to be changed and relieved of the vices that they had in their youth. It is also well known, on the other hand, that some abandon in their old age the virtues with which they were seen to be marked in their youth. But because people much more commonly follow the habits with which they were imbued as children for the rest of their lives, it became a proverbial saying that a man will not change in his old age whatever he began to do as a youth, even though it does not always happen that way. The proverb is formulated like this, therefore, to persuade its readers to be zealous for virtue in youth, lest they be unable as adults to learn the practices which they had despised to acquire at a tender age, for “the odor of that with which a new vessel is imbued will endure for a long time.”
