Exodus 21:15 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

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. Exodus 21:17. Matthew 15:4.Mark 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 Deuteronomy 21:18; Deuteronomy 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."