“If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his bloodguiltiness is upon him.” Leviticus 20: 9.

This was part of the Mosaic judicial law. But why would God want that in the law? Taken by itself, on the surface, it comes across as a rather harsh, even cruel, punishment. Taken in context, though, I see the law as a loving, correct, and necessary teaching; one of respect and order that contributes to peaceful unity with the Lord and with each other. It was  theocratic law applied only to Old Covenant Israel, but the teaching remains a living principle for God’s people today.

The punishment was not for your everyday casual slipups and hardheadedness. Every child displays those behaviors at some point. Instead, the law was designed to address a child’s continuous hatred and rebellion against the parents. And the law certainly wasn’t targeting little ones. The law was directed at older ones— children of an age of accountability; young adults who were most likely still living with their parents.

I glean that probability from Deuteronomy 21: 18-21. Expanding on the Leviticus passage, it reads: “If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his home town. And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear of it and fear.” That the child is a “glutton and drunkard” indicates an older child.

The law would be carried out only against a child with a continuing attitude and display of committing serious defiance; this after ignoring all pleas and discipline. These weren’t minor offenses, but ones that potentially could lead to endangering the parents’ lives and that of others in society.

God set it up that there would be an order in the family unit. The children are always to honor mother and father. In this way, it is easier for them to understand and respect godly authority. That the two parental authorities – earthly and heavenly – are linked is seen in two pieces of scripture that tell us to fear (reverence) our parents (Leviticus 19: 3) and God (Ecclesiastes 12: 13).

So the law was set up to protect both the family unit and the nation of Israel (God’s family), which was set up to be an example of a holy nation. If extreme cases of disobedience were allowed to disintegrate the family, it could lead to disintegration of the country’s values. Doesn’t the same hold true for today too?

Also keep in mind that the law didn’t allow for parents to willy-nilly kill their children. The stoning could only take place after the child was taken before the city elders and found guilty.

Harsh, seemingly cruel punishment? Yes! But the Lord wanted to impress upon us the seriousness with which He views sin that disrupts the family unit. He wants all evil to be purged from not only the blood family, but from the Christian, spiritual family too. We see it, this principle of admonition, carried over to the New Testament. In Corinthians 5: 1-11, we are told not to tolerate evil within the church.

Whether such stoning of children actually happened, we don’t know because the Bible doesn’t record any such instances. However, it’s a sure thing that the law was written to be a deterrent.

Moreover, though, it was written to be an example that would survive until this day and beyond. I know this because the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10: 5-12, that the things that happened in and to Old Testament Israel were written as examples that we might learn from.

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Read God Killing People—Just or Unjust? Click here.