Deuteronomy 21:18 - Meaning and Application

Here is a law for punishing a rebellious son. In the previous law, God protected children from being deprived of what was rightfully theirs. Here, he also protects parents from children who refuse the honor and obedience owed to them. God’s law is fair to both sides.

The son described here is stubborn and rebellious (Deuteronomy 21:18). This does not mean a child who is slow to learn or has weak understanding. It means one who is willful and set on his own way. He acts proudly toward his parents, ignores their authority, dismisses their correction, disobeys their commands for his own good, and refuses to be trained. He brings shame on the family, breaks his parents’ hearts, wastes their wealth, and threatens to ruin their estate by wild living.

He is especially described as a glutton or drunkard (Deuteronomy 21:20). This may mean that these sins were ones his parents had warned him against in a special way, so his refusal showed clear disobedience. Lemuel received such a warning from his mother (Proverbs 31:4). Parents should take great care to warn children early against drunkenness, keep them away from temptations to it, and teach them early to hate that shameful sin and deny themselves. Or it may mean that his drunkenness led to his pride and stubbornness toward his parents. Drunkenness draws people into all kinds of evil and hardens them in it. When people give themselves to drink, they forget the law, even the duty of honoring parents (Proverbs 31:5).

His own father and mother are to bring the charge against him (Deuteronomy 21:19-20). They may not carry out the death sentence themselves, but they must bring the case before the elders of the city. Even then, the complaint must come with grief: “This our son is stubborn and rebellious.” Those who give themselves to vice and refuse correction lose the natural love of their closest relatives. The ones who gave them life now become the ones who bring their guilt to light. Children who forget their duty should blame themselves, not their parents, if affection grows colder. And in the final judgment of God, all natural affection will be so fully ruled by divine love that even tender parents will agree to the condemnation of rebellious children, because God will be glorified in it forever.

The punishment was public stoning by the men of the city (Deuteronomy 21:21). This upheld parental authority, and it showed that God, our common Father, is jealous for that authority. It is one of the first and oldest forms of power that comes from him. If carried out rightly, this law would quickly remove the wicked from the land (Psalm 101:8). It would stop corruption from spreading by cutting off the rotten part early, because those who are bad members of a family will never become good members of the commonwealth. It would also strike fear into children and move them to obey their parents. Then all Israel would hear. The Jews say that the elders who condemned such a man were to send word throughout the nation, so the judgment would be known everywhere.

There is also a law here about the burial of the bodies of malefactors who were hanged (Deuteronomy 21:22). Among the Jews, hanging by the neck until death was not the usual practice. Instead, after certain criminals, especially those guilty of blasphemy or other terrible crimes, had been stoned, their dead bodies were sometimes hung up for a time as a public warning. This showed the shame of the crime and made others fear. But even then, they were to be taken down at sunset and buried. The law says, in effect, that this punishment is enough. Let the crime and the criminal be hidden in the grave.

This also showed respect for the human body, even in the case of the worst offenders. The time for exposing a dead body was limited for the same reason that another law limited the number of stripes, so that a brother would not seem utterly disgraced. God leaves punishment beyond death to himself. For human judges, there is nothing more they can do. For that reason, it is worth asking whether hanging bodies in chains, or displaying heads and quarters, is fitting among Christians who expect the resurrection of the body.

There was also a ceremonial reason for this command. Under Moses’ law, touching a dead body made a person ceremonially unclean. So dead bodies were not to be left hanging in the land, because that would defile the land in the same way. But the verse gives one reason that points forward to Christ. “He who is hanged is accursed of God” means that such a death brought the greatest shame and public disgrace. It marked a man as under God’s curse as far as outward punishment could show. Anyone who saw him hanging between heaven and earth would think him abandoned by both and unworthy of either, so he was not to remain there all night.

The apostle uses this language when he says that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). Moses, by the Spirit, used this phrase about being accursed of God to mean a most shameful death. Later, it could be applied to Christ’s death, showing that he bore the curse of the law for us. This greatly magnifies his love and strongly encourages our faith in him.

And, as Bishop Patrick rightly notes, this passage is applied to the death of Christ. It points to him not only because he bore our sins and suffered open shame, like those criminals who were under God’s curse, but also because he was taken down from the cursed tree in the evening and buried. The Jews took special care about this, with this law in mind (John 19:31).

This showed that the guilt had been removed and the law had been fully satisfied, just as it was satisfied when the criminal had hung until sunset and no more was required. Then the curse was over, and so it is for those who belong to Christ. As the land of Israel was made clean when the dead body was buried, so the church is washed and cleansed by the full satisfaction Christ made.