Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 21:15
And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
15. Striking a parent. Notice that the mother is placed on an equality with the father.
smiteth ] simply, without killing: the murder of a parent would fall under the general rule of v. 12. The severity of the penalty was in accordance with the high respect paid to both parents in ancient Israel: see Exo 20:12, and cf. Deu 21:18-21. Hmmurabi ( 195) ordained that if a son struck his father no mention is made of his mother his hands should be cut off. The older Sumerian laws said 1 [188] : ‘If a son has said to his father, Thou art not my father [i.e. repudiated him], he may brand him, lay fetters upon him, and sell him. If a son has said to his mother, Thou art not my mother, one shall brand his forehead, drive him round the city, and expel him from the house.’ At Athens (‘maltreatment of parents’) was actionable, and might be punished with , or loss of civil rights (Andoc. de Myst. 74, cf. Demosth. adv. Timocr. 103, 105, p. 732 f.); and Plato ( Legg. ix. 881 b d), if any one struck a parent, would have any one who witnessed the act, and failed to interfere, severely punished, and the offender himself condemned to perpetual exile, or death if he ever returned home. Solon (Cic. Rosc. 25) is said to have made no mention of such a crime, on the ground that he considered its occurrence impossible (Kn.).
[188] Winckler, Gesetze Hamm. (1904), p. 85; Pinches, op cit. [p. 212 n. ], p. 190 f.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The following offences were to be punished with death:
Striking a parent, compare Deu 27:16.
Cursing a parent, compare the marginal references.
Kidnapping, whether with a view to retain the person stolen, or to sell him, compare the marginal references.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Exo 21:15
He that smiteth his father.
Gods indignation against the unfilial spirit
I. The unfilial spirit in two aspects.
1. He that smiteth his father or his mother.
(1) A child may smite his parent literally, as in the case of those brutes we read of in the newspapers every week.
(2) A child may smite his parents authority by rebellion in thought, word, or deed; e.g., Absalom.
(3) A child may smite his parents wealth by extravagance or carelessness.
(4) A child may smite his parents character by an incautious revelation of domestic secrets.
(5) A child may smite his parents health, and, by misconduct, bring their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave; e.g., Josephs brethren.
(6) A child may smite his parents heart, and break it by disobedience and wilfulness; e.g., sons of Eli.
2. He that curseth (lit. revileth)
his father or his mother.
(1) A child may revile his parents by an assertion of personal independence.
(2) A child may revile his parents by speaking of them in a careless and irreverent way.
(3) A child may revile his parents by speaking to them in a familiar or impertinent way.
(4) A child may revile his parents by treating their counsels with contempt; and
(5) Alas! a child may revile his parents by cursing them to their face.
II. The uniform punishment of the unfilial spirit. Shall surely be put to death. The letter of this condemnation is now repealed, but its spirit lives on through the ages.
1. An unfilial child dies to the respect of civilised society.
2. An unfilial child is morally dead. If the sign of the moral life is love of the brethren, how dead must he be in whom filial respect and love is extinct!
3. An unfilial child, inasmuch as he breaks a moral law, and a law that partakes of the qualities of both tables and combines them, dies in a more terrible sense. The soul that sinneth it shall die. (J. W. Burn.)
Filial impiety
The books tell us of an old man whose son dragged him, by his hoary locks, to the threshold of his door, when the father said: Now stop, my son, that is as far as I dragged my father by his hair, There is still a God that judgeth in the earth. He makes Himself known by the judgments which He executeth. Who has ever seen any one a loser by filial piety, or a gainer by the want of it? There still lives a man who, in a passion, cursed his own father, and then struck him several times with a horsewhip. Judgment against this evil work was not executed speedily. Time rolled on, but no ingenuous repentance followed. After some time the cruel son was blasting rock in a well. The fuse caught fire, and he was blown up with the loss of both his eyes, and his right hand, with which he had struck his father. Soon after this sad occurrence he was received in the year 1868 as a pauper at the county workhouse. He has habitually been restless and miserable. He is happy nowhere. He has gone to another county and to another workhouse. But he is well known as a very wretched man. By the law of Moses, cursing father or mother was punished with death. No reason for the law is given, but the atrocious nature of the act. What fearful force is in such words as these: Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness. The eye that mocketh at his father, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it (Pro 20:20; Pro 30:17). (W. S. Plumer.)
Cruelty to a mother
A young man, of whom I once heard, was often spoken to and often prayed for by his mother, until he said to her, Mother, if you dont give up that praying for me, I will run away to sea. He ran away. Before he went, his mother packed his box. She put the writing paper at the top, and all she begged of him was, My boy, when you are far away from me, write to me. I will write to you; but send me an answer. He went away; he stayed three years, and never sent a single syllable to that loving mother, who oftentimes was kneeling by her bedside praying for that runaway boy. At last he went back to the old village to see how she was. As he walked down the street his heart misgave him. He walked up the path to the house, he knocked at the door; it was opened by a person whom he did not know. He asked for Mrs. So-and-so. How is she? The woman looked blank at him. He said, Is not she here? Oh, said the woman, you mean the old woman who used to live here. She died eight months ago of a broken heart. She had a bad son, who went away to sea and left her, and she wrote to him, and he never wrote back again. He turned away and went into the village churchyard. He looked at the graves, he found the one he sought, and threw himself down upon it, saying, Oh, mother, I never meant it, I never meant it! But he did it. (Dr. Morgan.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 15. That smiteth his father, or his mother] As such a case argued peculiar depravity, therefore no mercy was to be shown to the culprit.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
He that smiteth; either,
1. So as is before mentioned, Exo 21:12, so as they die. And to smite sometimes signifies to kill, as Gen 4:15; 2Ki 14:5, compared with 2Ch 25:3. And this may be here added by way of distinction: q.d. That killing of another man which is punished with death, must be done presumptuously; but the killing of parents, though not done presumptuously, is a capital crime. Or,
2. The mere smiting of them, to wit, wilfully and dangerously. Nor will any think this law too severe, that considers that this is an act full of horrid impiety against God, who hath so expressly and emphatically commanded children to honour their parents; of highest and most unnatural ingratitude, and utterly destructive to human society.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And he that smiteth his father or his mother,…. With his fist, or with a stick, or cane, or such thing, though they died not with the blow, yet it occasioned any wound, or caused a bruise, or the part smitten black and blue, or left any print of the blow; for, as Jarchi says, the party was not guilty, less by smiting there was a bruise, or weal, made, or any mark or scar: but if so it was, then he
shall be surely put to death; the Targum of Jonathan adds, with the suffocation of a napkin; and so Jarchi says with strangling; the manner of which was this, the person was sunk into a dunghill up to his knees, and two persons girt his neck with a napkin or towel until he expired. This crime was made capital, to show the heinousness of it, how detestable it was to God, and in order to deter from it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The commandment is now sanctioned by the denunciation of capital punishment for its violation, yet not so as to comprehend all who have in any respect sinned against their parents, but sufficient to show that the rights of parents are sacred, and not to be violated without the greatest criminality. We know that parricides (8) as being the most detestable of all men, were formerly sewn up in a leathern sack and cast into the water; but God proceeds further, when He commands all those to be exterminated who have laid violent hands on their parents (9) or addressed them in abusive language. For to smite does not only mean to kill, but refers to any violence, although no wound may have been inflicted. If, then, any one had struck his father or mother with his fist, or with a stick, the punishment of such an act of madness was the same as for murder. And, assuredly, it is an abominable and monstrous thing for a son not to hesitate to assault those from whom he has received his life; nor can it be but that impunity accorded to so foul a crime must straightway produce cruel barbarism. The second law avenges not only violence done to parents, but also, abusive words, which soon proceed to grosser insults and atrocious contempt. Still, if any one should have lightly let drop some slight reproach, as is often the case ill a quarrel, this severe punishment was not to be inflicted upon such, all inconsiderate piece of impertinence: and the word קלל, kalal, from which the participle used by Moses is derived, not only means to reproach, but also to curse, as well as to esteem lightly, and to despise. Whilst, therefore, not every insult, whereby the reverence due to parents was violated, received the punishment of death, still God would have that impious pride, which would subvert the first principles of nature, held in abhorrence. But, inasmuch as it might seem hard that a word, (10) however unworthy of a dutiful son, should be the cause of death; this objection is met, by what is added by God in Leviticus, “his blood shall be upon him, because he hath cursed his father or mother:” as if He would put a stop to what men might otherwise presume to allege in mitigation of the severity of the punishment.
(8) By the Roman law parricides were sewn up in a leathern sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, and a monkey, and east into the sea, or the nearest river. — Vide Cicero pro Rose. Amer., 2:25, 26.
(9) “Ceux qui auront outrage pere ou mere, soit de faict, soit de parole;” those who shall have outraged father or mother either by act or word. — Fr.
(10) “Une injure verbale;” a verbal injury. — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(15-17) And he that smiteth his father . . .-With homicide are conjoined some other offences, regarded as of a heinous character, and made punishable by death: viz. (1), striking a parent; (2) kidnapping; and (3) cursing a parent. The immediate sequence of these crimes upon murder, and their punishment by the same penalty, marks strongly Gods abhorrence of them. The parent is viewed as Gods representative, and to smite him is to offer God an insult in his person. To curse him implies, if possible, a greater want of reverence; and, since curses can only be effectual as appeals to God, it is an attempt to enlist God on our side against His representative. Kidnapping is a crime against the person only a very little short of murder, since it is to deprive a man of that which gives life its chief valueliberty. Many a man would prefer death to slavery; and to almost all the passing into the slave condition would be a calamity of the most terrible kind, Involving life-long misery. Its suddenness and unexpectedness, when the result of kidnapping, would augment its grievousness, and render it the most crushing of all misfortunes. Josephs history shows us how easy it was to sell a free man as a slave, and obtain his immediate removal into a distant country (Gen. 37:25-28). The Egyptian annals tell us of bloody wars carried on for kidnapping purposes (Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne, vol. i., pp. 423, 424). In the classical times and countries, the slaves offered for sale in the markets had usually been obtained in this way. The stringent law of the Mosaic code (Exo. 21:16) was greatly needed to check an atrocious crime very widely committed.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Exo 21:15. And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, &c. Of so great importance is obedience to parents, that God was pleased not only to enjoin it by a positive law, but even to adjudge those to death who were notoriously defective in it. The reason of which severity seems to be this; that those must be extremely hardened in guilt, and of a most perverse disposition, who could not only disobey, but even strike, abuse, and revile their parents. Exo 21:17. Mat 15:4. Mar 7:10. It is not, however, to be supposed, either that this power of life and death was vested in the parents, or that children were immediately to be dragged to capital punishment for the offence. Frequent chastisement and repeated admonitions were first to take place; which proving inefficacious, the judges and elders of the city were, upon the parents’ accusation, to denounce the punishment. See Deu 21:18; Deu 21:23. It has been often observed, that Moses makes no provision for parricide; a crime so monstrous that he mentions it not, as supposing human nature incapable of it. Thus too the ancient Persians held, that no man ever put his father or mother to death; and that those, whom history brands with the name of parricides, must either have been spurious children or foundlings. (See Herodot. lib. 1: cap. 138.) Solon, and the law of the twelve tables, omit any mention of this crime for the same reasons (see Plutarch’s Life of Romulus); a crime which the Chinese hold in such detestation, that, if it ever occurs among them, they totally destroy the town or village in which it happened, with all its inhabitants. Dr. Delaney’s words upon the subject are so remarkable, that I cannot forbear producing them. “In China, if a father charges his son with any crime before a magistrate, there needs no other proof; he is immediately condemned. If a son should presume to mock a parent, or lay violent hands upon him, the whole country is alarmed, and the judgment reserved for the emperor himself: the magistrates of the place are turned out, and all the neighbourhood threatened, as having given countenance to so infernal a temper, which must be supposed to have discovered itself upon other occasions; it is impossible, they think, that it should have arrived at such a degree of villainy at once. The criminal in these cases is sentenced to be cut into ten thousand pieces, and afterwards burnt; his houses and land destroyed; and even the houses which stood near him, to remain as monuments of so detested a crime; or rather, that the remembrance of so abominable a villainy should be effaced from the earth. Nor are even their emperors, in all their height of power, exempted from the strictest discharge of duty and piety to their parents.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Observe the uplifted hand in smiting the parent is made capital, like the sin of murder. Pro 30:17 ; Deu 21:21Deu 21:21 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Exo 21:15 And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
Ver. 15. He that smiteth. ] By the law of God, of nature, and of nations, such a man should die. And herein, I think, our laws are defective: albeit, I am not of Carolostadius’s mind, who, if Melancthon misreport him not, held that these judicial laws set down by Moses should be still of force, and these only, in Christian commonwealths, and all other civil and municipal laws abolished. Our English Alfred I cannot but commend for his piety, in that he began his common laws with the ten commandments. a
a Lombard.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
smiteth. Here and elsewhere in this chapter (except Exo 21:26), to smite to death, or seriously.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
To smite either father or mother, in a manner which indicated either contempt or malice, or left marks of violence, was deemed a proof of so ungrateful and unnatural a disposition, that no provocation was admitted as an excuse, but the offence was made capital: nay, he who cursed his father or mother, who uttered imprecations, ill wishes, or revilings, against a parent, was included in the same sense; though few crimes were made capital by the law of Moses. The law of God, as delegated to parents is honoured when they are honoured, and despised when they are despised, and to rebel against the lawful exercise of this authority is rebellion against God. – Rev. T. Scott Deu 21:18-21, Deu 27:24, Pro 30:11, Pro 30:17, 1Ti 1:9
Reciprocal: Exo 20:12 – Honour Lev 19:3 – fear
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Exo 21:15. He that smiteth his father, &c. So sacred and inviolable is that reverence which children owe to their parents, that, by the law of God, it was death not only to strike them, but even to curse or outrageously revile them, Exo 21:17, and Mat 15:4. The reason of this law is, that such crimes are a sign of most audacious wickedness. It appears, however, from Deu 21:18, that children were not to be put to death for the first offence of this kind, but if, after repeated admonitions from their parents, they still persisted in their undutiful carriage, without hope of reformation, then, upon the accusation of their parents, they were to be put to death.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Code of Hammurabi specified that the person who struck his father should have his hands cut off. [Note: Ibid., section 195.] The Torah took a stronger position requiring the death of the person who struck either parent. The reason seems to be that by doing so the striker did not honor his parents but revolted against God’s ordained authority over him or her (Exo 21:15; cf. Exo 20:12).
"In the first place age is not a factor in the determining of a delinquent in the ancient Near East: age is never mentioned in the [non-biblical] texts. A minor, for all intents and purposes, was one who was living in his or her parent’s house. There he or she has duties and responsibilities which place him directly under the authority of the parent. Responsibility for a minor’s behavior rested solely with the parent. Any anti-social act committed by the minor was considered also an offense against the parent who dealt with it accordingly. When proceedings are initiated against a minor, as we shall see, it is the parent, not the courts, who institutes the proceedings. . . .
"In ancient times no provision was made for a minor committing a criminal act, that is, there was no special protection extended to juveniles convicted in criminal cases: the penalty for both an adult and a minor was the same. This represents a striking difference from our judicial system whereby a minor is not held to be as criminally responsible for his conduct as an adult. In effect he is granted a certain amount of protection by the courts, and his sentence is not as severe as an adult’s would be in a similar case. It is curious that in the few examples we have of felonies committed by minors in the ancient Near East the opposite situation prevails. A minor receives a more severe sentence than an adult would in a comparable case. . . .
"At this point we should not get too exercised over whether or not these punishments were ever carried out. It is considered today most unlikely that these types of punishments, or talionic punishment in general, were ever put into practice in the ancient Near East. [Note: Encyclopaedia Judaica, s.v. "Cuneiform Law," by J. Finkelstein, 16:1505i.] What is important here is the severity accorded these offenses in the light of other offenses listed in the same legal corpus. It is most significant that in both cases the assault is against a parent. Assault against another person would subject the minor to a lesser penalty. In Mesopotamian law a minor striking someone other than his parent would not have his hand cut off; depending on his status he would be fined or flogged. [Note: Code of Hammurabi, sections 202-4.] Likewise, in ancient Israel he would be fined and not subject to the death penalty (Exo 21:18-19). Thus we have a situation where striking a non-parent makes one subject to regular criminal law, but striking a parent makes one subject to a ’juvenile delinquent’ law which carries a more severe penalty." [Note: David Marcus, "Juvenile Delinquency in the Bible and the Ancient Near East," Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 13 (1981):32-34.]
Kidnapping was also a capital offense (Exo 21:16; Exo 20:15; Gen 37:28) as was cursing (dishonoring) one’s parents (Exo 21:17; cf. Exo 20:12). Exo 21:15 deals with a criminal offense, but Exo 21:17 describes a civil offense (cf. Lev 20:9; Deu 27:16; Pro 20:20; Pro 30:11). Marcus went on to distinguish this type of offense as follows.
"Turning now to non-criminal acts, civil or status offenses, we review the salient points of the modern definition of a juvenile delinquent as one who is incorrigible, ungovernable, or habitually disobedient. The operative word in most modern definitions is ’habitual.’ An isolated occurrence does not make a child delinquent. Note that the New York State definition speaks of the child as being ’habitually disobedient,’ and the California one terms the delinquent as one who ’habitually refuses to obey.’ We shall see that a number of ancient Near Eastern legal texts make this distinction as well. This is important because it enables us to distinguish what is clearly delinquency from what is only what we call ’generation gap’ disagreements. The ancients were well aware of this generation gap between parents and children." [Note: Ibid., pp. 35-36. For an evaluation of modern American penological philosophies in the light of the Mosaic Law, see Gary R. Williams, "The Purpose of Penology in the Mosaic Law and Today," Bibliotheca Sacra 133:529 (January-March 1976):42-55.]
All of these crimes worthy of death (in Exo 21:12-17) were serious in God’s eyes. They either violated a basic right of a human being created in God’s image or were expressions of rebellion against God’s revealed authority in the home, the basic unit of society.
"Life, in essence, is the property of God; the possession of it is leased to human beings for a number of years. This lease can be extended or contracted in accordance with God’s will. (Cf. 1Ki 21:27-29; 2Ki 20:1-6; Job 1:12-19.) When a man arrogates to himself the right of ownership in the life of human beings and interferes with the right of enjoyment of life by taking it away-that is, killing it-he has violated one of the essential laws of God and therefore forfeits his own right to the possession of life." [Note: Davis, p. 221.]