Exodus 21:15
He that striketh his father or mother, shall be put to death.
Open Exodus 21:15 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Qui percusserit patrem suum aut matrem, morte moriatur.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Ὃς τύπτει πατέρα αὐτοῦ ἢ μητέρα αὐτοῦ, θανάτῳ θανατούσθω.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וּמַכֵּ֥ה אָבִ֛יו וְאִמּ֖וֹ מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת
Haydock's commentary
Striketh, even though death should not ensue. But some require a grevious wound, and that the son should be twice admonished, Deuteronomy xxi. 18. Parricide seemed a crime so shocking and unnatural, that neither Moses nor Solon made any express law against it.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Origen Origen's Commentary on Matthew, Chapter IX
Jesus, however, does not accuse them with reference to a tradition of the Jewish elders, but with regard to two most imperative commandments of God, the one of which was the fifth in the decalogue, being as follows: “Honour thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee, and that thy days may be long on the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee;” and the other was written thus in Leviticus, “If a man speak evil of his father or his mother, let him die the death; he has spoken evil of his father or mother, he shall be guilty.” But when we wish to examine the very letter of the words as given by Matthew, “He that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the death,” consider whether it was taken from the place where it was written, “Whoso striketh his father or mother, let him die the death; and he that speaketh evil of father or mother let him die the death.” For such are …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).