Laws Concerning Wives & Sons (pt 3): Deuteronomy 21:10-21

Text Read

10 “When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, 12 and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13 And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

Inheritance Rights of the Firstborn

15 “If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, and if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,[a] 16 then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn, 17 but he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his.

A Rebellious Son

18 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Text Explained

What are you to do with a rebellious son? Stone him. This seems to be a bit heavy-handed for a son who exhibits some rebellion. Did this mean that if a son talked back or disobeyed his parents, they were required to take him to the judge and have him executed? Let’s take a deeper look into this very confounding Law.

Jewish family unit:

First, it is good to note that this Law is an outgrowth of the fifth commandment found in Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” This commandment contains a promise for those who obey it. If a son or daughter honors their father and mother, their days will be long in the Land. However, in today’s text we see the reverse of side of this command. Namely that the final end of a son who refuses to honor his father and mother is death. Honoring parents equals life while dishonoring them equals death.

Second, the son is being stubborn and rebellious or more literally rebelliously stubborn. This is more than simply a willful son, but rather a son who is in outright rebellion against his parents. The significance of the son’s rebellion against his parents does not end with his parents, but by extension he is rebelling against God who had set his parents over him. Even more than that, the rebellion was at a stage that was affecting the community. As one scholar notes, “The case of the rebellious son goes beyond matters of family alone, for, as we have seen (on the Fifth Commandment, 5:16), the family unit is an essential part of the larger political and religious fabric. Respect for parents was therefore a basic element in a right attitude to the whole society and indeed to God.” (McConville, J. G. (2002). Deuteronomy (D. W. Baker & G. J. Wenham, Eds.; Vol. 5, p. 331). Apollos; InterVarsity Press.) We see evidence of this today when youth decide to do what they ought not do, they become quite a danger to those around themselves and cause all sorts of mischief and destruction that other members in the community have to clean up. (Illustration

The Law is vague on the exact details of the rebellion on purpose. In fact, the same language of stubborn rebellion is used to describe Israel in Jeremiah 5:23 “But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away.” And in Psalm 78:8 “and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.”