Maybe I’m just getting old, but kids these days really struggle with respecting their elders.
My wife sees it all the time. As a teacher, she gets a front-row seat to seven-year-olds throwing chairs or six-year-olds giving guidance counselors the finger. She knows of two teachers in our district that have been outright assaulted by children.
I’ll channel my inner grandfather here and say that this is a worrisome trend. I know that kids have always been bad to a certain level, but it seems way worse than when I was their age. And I knew some kids that were downright terrible to their parents.
Respect for parents is seen in the Bible as a cornerstone of societal stability. If children disobey their parents, then it’s not too far of a stretch to disobey other authority figures, up to and including God Himself.
This is why Moses links honoring your father and mother “so that it may go well with you” (Deuteronomy 5:16). Disrespect leads to disobedience, which eventually leads to disinheritance.
It’s no surprise then that Moses takes another opportunity here in Deuteronomy 21 to talk about the punishment for a rebellious son, which is death.
I can’t imagine taking this step with my children (which means it was probably ignored most of the time in the ancient world), but Moses does a great job of removing emotions from the situation by calling on the witness of the elders. It’s not simply anger or indifference from the parents that generates this execution, but the testimony of the elders too. They agree that he is insubordinate.
Moses uses an interesting clause on the back end, though. In his view, the parents testify that not only is he insubordinate, but also “a glutton and a drunkard.”
What’s the story there? Why is insubordination linked with two sins of excess?
Interestingly enough, the Bible correlates these ideas in other places. Proverbs 28:7 says a child who keeps the law is “discerning,” while those who keep the company of gluttons “humiliate his father.” Proverbs 23:20-21 also links gluttony and drunkenness with eventual (and inevitable) poverty.
Maybe that’s why Moses adds this in on these verses. It’s not necessarily that insubordination is the same as gluttony and drunkenness, but that a disobedient son will achieve the same end.
If that’s the case, then what can you do with someone like that? A disobedient child—one who has established a pattern of disobedience—is unlikely to turn around, even, apparently, under the threat of death. This extends it beyond just the child simply refusing to make their bed, and into a hostile rebellion.
In the eyes of the Law, poverty and destruction are the only real end result of insubordination, just as it is for gluttony and drunkenness. And rather than changing their ways, they just keep getting worse and worse.