Exodus 21:15

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

And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death. He that smiteth his father or his mother , [ 'aabiyw (H1) wª'imow (H517) - his father and his mother. The 'and' is to be rendered distributively, 'or'].

He that smiteth; either, 1. So as is before mentioned, , so as they die. And to smite sometimes signifies to kill, as , compared with . 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.

Exodus 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. Lombard.

(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 God’s abhorrence of them. The parent is viewed as God’s 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 value—liberty. 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. Joseph’s history shows us how easy it was to sell a free man as a slave, and obtain his immediate removal into a distant country (Genesis 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 (Exodus 21:16) was greatly needed to check an atrocious crime very widely committed.

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.

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 Exodus 20:12, and cf. Deuteronomy 21:18-21. Hạ ?mmurabi (§ 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 said1[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 γονέωνκάκωσις (‘maltreatment of parents’) was actionable, and might be punished with ἀτιμία, 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.

The following offences were to be punished with death: Striking a parent, compare Deuteronomy 27:16. Cursing a parent, compare the marginal references.