"The Staff of God" is a symbol of the spiritual power and authority of God's Laws, as a totality of the various methods of their implementation.

"The Staff of God" represents the totality of the Will of God, expressed in all the firmly established, eternal, unchangeable Laws of Being: the physical and spiritual Laws of Life.  

Knowing and executing the spiritual Laws of God opens to man the way to the safe use of the learned Laws of the material world.

"The Staff of God" is a symbol of the Divine Commandments, the violation, perversion of which inevitably befalls man in the form of destructive, disastrous consequences.

"The rod" is also a symbol of the spiritual authority over man of the Word of God's Covenants, empowering him to rule over the sinful demands of the flesh, opening the way to spiritual freedom from the bondage of sin.

Negative Meaning: 

"The rod of the wicked" is a symbol of all the methods and forms of the spiritual and physical system of enslaving nations, all the "Rods" of sinful wisdom, the false teachings used by the insidious "Lords" of the sinful world; it is the whole world, cruel, beastly system of government that dominates and plunges nations into the abyss of iniquity.