9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.
There has already been some discussion among other commentators as to what sort of “cursing” could warrant a death penalty for an ungrateful child. Tradition maintains that this death penalty only applied to the most severe of oaths against one’s parents, one that employed the name of God, Himself, but so far as I can tell, there is only a matter of tradition, not definitively proven to be true. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter. It still remains a death penalty for words spoken, which ostensibly our laws and culture are against, though recent examples like the murder of Charlie Kirk suggest that many today privately endorse the notion of killing others for their speech.
The fact is, being put death for one’s words has a long history in humanity, and it seems likely that we have only had a brief departure from it. Interestingly, that departure came about by the prevalence of Christian ideals, and now if it is waning, it appears to be due to the abandonment of those same ideals.
Even so, while many forms of death for evil words might be unjust, today’s verse should cause even the Christian to wonder if there are some that are just. The sharing of words is the sharing of ideas, and the sharing of perverse and twisted ideas has killed innocents, as can be seen in just our recent history. Abortion, Canada’s MAID program, and the sterilization of children with gender dysphoria are a few examples of how words, ideas, and movements are vehicles of self-destruction for entire cultures.
And when it comes to self-destructive and suicidal expressions, it is hard to think of one more direct than the abhorrence of one’s own progenitors. While no one has perfect parents, and some have truly awful parents, our very existence in this world is still dependent upon them. Cursing one’s own mortal beginning is an act of ouroboros. It is the tree cutting off its own roots, the fetus severing its umbilical cord, the breaking of one’s own tether to life. And so, there is something symbolic in the death penalty being assigned to such an act.
