Exodus Chapter 21 verse 15 Holy Bible
And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
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Any man who gives a blow to his father or his mother is certainly to be put to death.
read chapter 21 in BBE
And he that striketh his father, or his mother, shall certainly be put to death.
read chapter 21 in DARBY
And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
read chapter 21 in KJV
And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
read chapter 21 in WBT
"Anyone who attacks his father or his mother shall be surely put to death.
read chapter 21 in WEB
`And he who smiteth his father or his mother is certainly put to death.
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Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerses 15-17. - Other capital offences. The unsystematic character of the arrangement in this chapter is remarkably shown by this interruption of the consideration of different sorts of homicide, in order to introduce offences of quite a different character, and those not very closely allied to each other - e.g., 1. Striking a parent; 2. Kidnapping; 3. Cursing a parent. Verse 15. - He that smiteth his father, etc. To "smite" here is simply to "strike" - to offer the indignity of a blow - not to kill, which had already been made capital (ver. 12), not in the case of parents only, but in every case. The severity of the law is very remarkable, and strongly emphasises the dignity and authority of parents. There is no parallel to it in any other known code, though of course the patria potestas of the Roman father gave him the power of punishing a son who had struck him, capitally.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(15-17) And he that smiteth his father . . .-With homicide are conjoined some other offences, regarded as of a heinous character, and made punishable by death: viz. (1), striking a parent; (2) kidnapping; and (3) cursing a parent. The immediate sequence of these crimes upon murder, and their punishment by the same penalty, marks strongly God's abhorrence of them. The parent is viewed as God's representative, and to smite him is to offer God an insult in his person. To curse him implies, if possible, a greater want of reverence; and, since curses can only be effectual as appeals to God, it is an attempt to enlist God on our side against His representative. Kidnapping is a crime against the person only a very little short of murder, since it is to deprive a man of that which gives life its chief value--liberty. Many a man would prefer death to slavery; and to almost all the passing into the slave condition would be a calamity of the most terrible kind, Involving life-long misery. Its suddenness and unexpectedness, when the result of kidnapping, would augment its grievousness, and render it the most crushing of all misfortunes. Joseph's history shows us how easy it was to sell a free man as a slave, and obtain his immediate removal into a distant country (Genesis 37:25-28). The Egyptian annals tell us of bloody wars carried on for kidnapping purposes (Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne, vol. i., pp. 423, 424). In the classical times and countries, the slaves offered for sale in the markets had usually been obtained in this way. The stringent law of the Mosaic code (Exodus 21:16) was greatly needed to check an atrocious crime very widely committed.
