If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son. A severe law was enacted in this case. Hebrew parents were not, as among the Greeks and Romans, invested with the power of life and death of their children; but still they had, in addition to their natural, a legal authority over them. In case of "a stubborn and rebellious son" -
i.e., one whose insubordination and dangerous violence was the result of reckless and confirmed profligacy-the law provided a remedy. But in the first place they must have exhausted every means of remonstrance and expostulation. They were themselves to become the prosecutors, and the consent of both parents was required as a prevention of any abuse of it; for it was reasonable to suppose that they would not both agree to a criminal information against their son, except from absolute necessity, arising from his inveterate and hopeless wickedness; and in that view the law was wise and salutary, as such a person would be a pest and nuisance to society. The punishment was that to which blasphemers were doomed; for parents are considered God's representatives, and invested with a portion of His authority over their children.
Not a single instance of this law, having been put in execution, occurs in the whole history of Israel; and the warranted inference is, that the legislator evinced his wisdom by the establishment of a statute which exercised an indirect but powerful influence in remedying the evil, by either leading parents to take particular care in the upbringing of their children, or else in prompting natural affection to carry longsuffering to the utmost extreme, ere a public tribunal was appealed to. (See an instance of Herod the Great taking advantage of this law against two of his sons before the judges at Berytus, Josephus, 'Antiquities,' b. 16:, ch. 11:, sec. 2.)