Commentary - Leviticus 20:9

Bird's-eye view

Leviticus 20 is a chapter that lays out the stark consequences for various forms of covenant rebellion. It is a chapter of holy boundaries. After reiterating the absolute prohibition of idolatry, specifically the abomination of Molech worship, the Lord lists a series of capital crimes that defile the land and the people He has set apart for Himself. These are not arbitrary rules designed to make life difficult; they are protective walls around the sanctuary of the covenant community. The list includes adultery, incest, homosexuality, and bestiality, all of which are profound corruptions of God's created order for sexuality and family. Right in the middle of this list of high crimes, we find this statute regarding the one who curses his father or mother. Its inclusion here is intentional and instructive. It teaches us that the stability of a society, its very life, is directly tied to the integrity of the family. An attack on parental authority is not a minor infraction; it is a foundational assault on the entire social and covenantal structure that God has ordained.

The severity of the penalty, death, underscores the gravity of the offense. In God's economy, the family is the basic building block of society, the church, and the nation. The authority of parents is a delegated authority, a reflection of God's own fatherhood. To curse one's parents is therefore an act of high treason against God Himself. It is to despise the very font of one's own life and the structure of nurture and instruction God has established. This law reveals how seriously God takes the fifth commandment and demonstrates that the health of a nation can be measured by how it treats its most basic and sacred institution: the family.

Outline

Context In Leviticus

This verse is situated within a section of Leviticus often called the Holiness Code (chapters 17-26). The central theme is stated repeatedly: "You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy" (Lev 19:2). This holiness was not an abstract spiritual state but was to be expressed in the concrete details of everyday life, including worship, diet, sexual relations, and social justice. Chapter 20 serves as the penal code for the violations of the holiness described in the preceding chapters, especially chapter 18. It lists the punishments for those who would defile the community and the land. By placing the cursing of parents alongside capital sexual sins, the law elevates the sin of filial rebellion to the highest level of social disruption. It is a sin that, like idolatry or incest, pollutes the land and invites God's judgment upon the entire nation. The structure argues that a society that tolerates contempt for parents will soon find itself tolerating every other form of perversion.

Key Issues

The Cornerstone of Society

Modern sensibilities recoil at a text like this. We live in an age that has sentimentalized the family on one hand and utterly dismantled it on the other. We see youthful rebellion as a normal, even healthy, stage of development. But God does not. The fifth commandment, to honor father and mother, is the first commandment with a promise (Eph 6:2), indicating its foundational importance. It is the hinge commandment, connecting our duty to God (commandments 1-4) with our duty to man (commandments 6-10). Why? Because the family is the first government. It is the nursery of church and state. The authority of the father is the first authority a child ever encounters, and it is meant to be a living picture of the authority of God the Father. When a child learns to honor and obey his parents, he is learning the grammar of submission that will enable him to honor the elders of the church and the magistrates of the state. Conversely, when a child is permitted to curse his parents, he is being trained in the language of rebellion that will ultimately be directed at God Himself. A society that will not deal with treason in the home will soon be unable to deal with it anywhere else. The family is the cornerstone, and if it crumbles, the whole building collapses.

Verse by Verse Commentary

9 ‘If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother,

The law is stated with broad applicability: "if there is anyone." This is not limited to a young child in a fit of temper, though it would include that. This applies to any person, of any age, who reviles, belittles, or repudiates the authority and honor due to his parents. The word for "curses" here is qalal, which means to make light of, to treat with contempt, or to declare vile. It is the direct antithesis of the word for "honor" (kabad), which means to treat as heavy or weighty. This is not just about using foul language. As Jesus would later clarify, it includes sophisticated ways of dishonoring parents, such as the Corban rule, where a son could declare his assets "a gift to God" in order to avoid the financial responsibility of caring for his elderly parents (Mark 7:10-13). Cursing is any word or action that treats the God-given office of a parent as a trivial or contemptible thing. It is an attack on their station, their authority, and their person.

he shall surely be put to death;

The penalty is stark and absolute. The Hebrew phrase here, moth yumath, is an emphatic construction meaning "dying he shall die," which is translated as "he shall surely be put to death." This was the maximum penalty. We should not imagine that the ancient Israelites were dragging every sassy teenager out to be stoned. This is case law, establishing the principle of ultimate justice for an incorrigible and high-handed rebel (cf. Deut 21:18-21). The existence of this penalty on the books was meant to be a potent deterrent, shaping the entire culture toward filial piety. It taught every Israelite from childhood that the family was sacred, and an assault on it was an assault on God. Moderns think this is harsh, but we execute our society in other ways. We have traded the execution of the rebellious son for the slow-motion execution of the family itself through divorce, abortion, and the celebration of every form of sexual confusion. God's law aims to put sin to death to protect life; our rebellion protects sin and puts life to death.

he has cursed his father or his mother.

The law repeats the crime as the basis for the sentence. This is the legal rationale. The penalty fits the crime because the crime is a form of spiritual murder. It is an attempt to destroy the authority and honor that God has invested in the parental office. In a patriarchal society, which is to say, a biblical society, the father is the head of the household, the provider, and the protector. The mother is the heart of the home, the nurturer, and the life-giver. To curse them is to curse the entire structure of one's existence. It is to saw off the branch you are sitting on. The repetition emphasizes that the act itself, the cursing of the very source of one's life, is what makes the offender worthy of death.

His bloodguiltiness is upon him.

This final phrase is crucial. It means that the responsibility for the offender's death lies entirely with him. The community, in executing the sentence, is not committing murder. They are acting as God's agents of justice, purging the evil from their midst. The man's blood is on his own head. He brought this upon himself through his high-handed rebellion. This concept of bloodguiltiness protects the conscience of the civil magistrate. When the state executes a murderer, it does not become guilty of murder. Rather, it is cleansing the land of the bloodguiltiness that the murderer introduced (Num 35:33). In the same way, the one who curses his parents has committed a capital crime, and his execution is a just and cleansing act for the community. He is the author of his own demise.

Application

So what do we do with a text like this today? As Christians, we are not under the Mosaic civil code. The nation of Israel was a typological kingdom, and its civil laws do not apply wholesale to modern secular nations. We are not to form stoning parties. However, this does not mean the law has nothing to say to us. The Westminster Confession rightly teaches that the judicial law of Israel expired with the state of that people, "not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require."

And what is the general equity here? It is that honoring parents is a matter of life and death for any society. Disobedience to parents is listed by Paul as a hallmark of a depraved culture given over by God to judgment (Rom 1:30; 2 Tim 3:2). A culture that mocks fathers and sentimentalizes mothers, that encourages youthful rebellion, that outsources the raising of children to the state, is a culture that has a death wish. We see the fruit of this all around us. The principle of this law remains eternally true: contempt for parents is a capital crime against civilization.

For the Christian, the application is even more profound. We see in this harsh penalty the true ugliness of our own sin. Who among us has perfectly honored his father and mother? Who has never harbored bitterness, spoken a contemptuous word, or failed in his duty? This law, like all of God's law, drives us to the cross. It shows us our guilt and our desperate need for a savior. And on that cross, we see the only Son who ever perfectly honored His Father. And yet, He was the one who was cursed, who was "put to death," and whose "bloodguiltiness" for our sins was laid "upon him." He took the curse that our filial rebellion deserved so that we, the rebellious children, could be adopted into the family of God and cry out, "Abba, Father." The law shows us the penalty for cursing our earthly fathers; the gospel shows us the grace that comes from the perfect obedience of the Son to His heavenly Father.