If Gill is indicating corporal punishment he’s mistaken and it isn’t his first mistake, Bob.
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/7626.htm
The Hebrew word is shebet - rod is only one potential translation. Staff is another and more accurate. The staff is the Word of God, the only true corrective. No sheepherder beats his sheep. It’s useless and harmful.
The prudent and truly loving sheepherder uses his rod/staff to guide and correct. Correction is what is needed, not hitting.
Matthew Henry gets it right:
24. He acts as if he hated his child, who, by false indulgence, permits sinful habits to gather strength, which will bring sorrow here, and misery hereafter. 25. It is the misery of the wicked, that even their sensual appetites are always craving. The righteous feeds on the word and ordinances, to the satisfying of his soul with the promises of the gospel, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Bread of life.
Proverbs is all about turning from sin to God. For children, parents are to raise them up to God and therefore early correction before sin is deeply rooted is best and the easiest course.
Actually, sheepherders DO set the dogs on sheep who won’t move. And I’ve helped a sheep rancher use a rubber hose to get sheep thru a ramp before.
Corporal punishment is definitely allowed and encouraged in the Bible.
“He who withholds his rod hates his son,
But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”
I’m sorry, but that does not sound to me like encouragement to read the Bible to my kids regularly. That is a good thing too, but it is not what the verse is talking about. The same goes for:
“Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child;
The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.”
“Do not hold back discipline from the child,
Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.
You shall strike him with the rod
And rescue his soul from Sheol.”
“A whip is for the horse, a bridle for the donkey,
And a rod for the back of fools.”