Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 21:15-17

"And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death. And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. And he that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death." — Exodus 21:15-17 (ASV)

And he that smiteth his father ... — With homicide are joined some other offences, regarded as heinous and made punishable by death. These include:

1. Striking a parent;
2. Kidnapping; and
3. Cursing a parent.

The immediate sequence of these offences following murder, and their punishment by the same penalty, strongly marks God’s abhorrence of them.

The parent is viewed as God’s representative, and to strike him is to offer God an insult in his person. To curse him implies, if possible, a greater lack of reverence; and, since curses can only be effective 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 deprives a man of that which gives life its chief value—liberty. Many a man would prefer death to slavery; and for almost all, passing into the slave condition would be a calamity of the most terrible kind, involving lifelong misery.

Its suddenness and unexpectedness, when it is the result of kidnapping, would increase its severity and make 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 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.