Deuteronomy 21:10-23 - Dialogue Matters

The fifth of the ten commandments is “Honour your father and your mother.” So what happens if you’ve got a son who decides that this didn’t apply to him? Well our parashah explains, and it’s not good news. The parents of the defiant son take him to the town’s elders, and declare that he is stubborn and rebellious, a glutton and a drunkard. Then he’s stoned to death.

So there are fatal consequences for not honouring your parents. That’s all very well, but stoning your child doesn’t exactly accord with progressive views on parenting, which focus on developing a secure bond between children and carers. Some Talmudic rabbis justified using the law as a threat, as other potential troublemakers would be deterred by seeing the fate of that one juvenile delinquent. An example of threat-based law in our times would be deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. So it’s not exactly an uncontroversial policy.

Other rabbis defended the law on the grounds that the son deserved punishment, not for what he had done, but for what he was likely to do in the future. The equivalent today would be preventative detention, where someone is put into prison, because he is judged to be a danger to society, such as the would-be terrorists held in Guantánamo Bay. But this conflicts with a fundamental principle of Judaism – that even the most hardened criminal can repent and change. That is, after all, the whole point of Yom Kippur. A stubborn and rebellious child can grow into a responsible adult.

But in ancient Near East tribal society, where fathers had the power of life and death over their children, disobedience to parents was seen as a severe threat. One of the Audacious Jews we will be talking about this term is Abraham, who felt he had the right to kill his son. But one way to interpret the story of the binding of Isaac, is that it is only God who has the power of life and death, not the father. Similarly one way to read our Torah passage is that it is limiting the primitive use of power by parents. It is the impartial judges who decide the punishment - not the frustrated parents.

Nonetheless, the harshness of the punishment so troubled the rabbis, that they made the law virtually impossible to carry out. They saw it as a way of signalling the gravity of being a stubborn and rebellious son, rather than specific action to be taken. So they decided that the ‘child’ must be within three months of attaining maturity (younger than that, and he was still a minor; older, and he was no longer a child). He must have stolen money from his parents, used it to buy a specific measure of meat and Italian wine, eaten and drunk it all in one go, and in a place other than his parent’s house, and so on. These conditions meant that the law was never in practice implemented. Instead by reciting it to a rebellious son, it might frighten him and persuade him to mend his ways.

But the law still belies a failure in parenting. Parents come to court and in effect say: “We can no longer control our child. We reject him.” The relationship between parents and son has broken down, this is his fault, and he is repudiated and condemned.

Luckily, Judaism doesn’t just have this one bleak picture of parenting – the haftarah describes a different model. Here the relationship is personal, guiding, and reflective. Parents encourage the child to choose the right path in life and to pursue wisdom and truth. Discipline and moderation are signs of wisdom. It makes clear that overindulgence in food and drink leads to poverty and ruin.

So, the emphasis in Proverbs is on preventing decline rather than on punishing it. It stresses the importance of education, especially moral guidance, and the role of the community in supporting struggling youth. Good parenting involves transmitting lived values, not just rules, about how to treat others.

So Proverbs emphasises ongoing engagement, correction, and hope – which means maintaining dialogue even when disagreeing. It advises people to nurture, guide and hold on to the belief that change is possible. The passage in Deuteronomy represents the opposite approach: here the point has been reached where persistent refusal to change, means decisive action has to be taken to safeguard the broader community.

Deuteronomy shows the end point when all hope of change has gone; Proverbs highlights the ongoing process of nurturing change. Deuteronomy is judicial, punitive, final; Proverbs persuades, builds relationships and transforms thinking. To use the language of another Audacious Jew we’ll shortly be discussing, Daniel Kahneman, Deuteronomy is the reaction of someone acting instinctively and thinking quickly, whilst Proverbs is all about acting with considered, slow thinking, to try to correct emotional bias.

Proverbs’ model means engaging, guiding, and reasoning in the hope of mutual benefit. Deuteronomy reflects the hard boundary: there comes a point where someone’s behaviour (or an opposing side’s actions) becomes irredeemable and must be firmly stopped for the protection of others. At Yom Kippur we read the story of Jonah, who wanted God to destroy Ninevah. But God took the Proverbs route and the Ninevites changed. It’s not clear if Jonah learnt the lesson that tolerance and kindness is God’s preferred route.

This same tension between final judgement and patient guidance is not only in our texts, but in how we act as communities today. At a recent rally calling for the release of the Israeli hostages, Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy attempted to speak openly in the spirit of Proverbs - broadening the conversation, calling out injustice, and affirming the dignity of all peoples. In such a charged atmosphere, it took real courage for them to stand up and speak with honesty, compassion, and integrity. Some of the crowd, feeling that these views were unacceptable in that setting, used the approach of Deuteronomy to shut the Rabhis down. Josh and Charley were removed from the speaking platform.

Our Proverbs passage implores us to try to win hearts and to keep the discussion alive, even when it's hard. Principled, compassionate, and unafraid dialogue matters, especially when we deeply disagree. Deuteronomy shows us the limits of dialogue; Proverbs reminds us never to give up on it too soon. Our challenge is to have the courage to keep a respectful conversation alive, even when emotions are high and politics clash. In the end, the Fifth Commandment is not only about honouring our parents, but about honouring the importance of relationships - keeping faith that broken bonds can be mended, and that stubbornness can grow into wisdom. One to ponder about this Yom Kippur.