# Matthew 15 Kill Your Children Objection Defeater ## Intro A popular objection goes like this: *"Jesus wasn't so loving. In [Matthew 15:4](/codex/matthew-15-4/) he says that anyone who curses his father or mother should be put to death. Jesus told people to kill their kids."* **Read the paragraph around the verse and the objection falls apart.** Jesus is not giving an order. He is arguing with religious leaders who had found a loophole: a man could declare his money "given to God" and then refuse to use it to support his aging mother and father. Jesus quotes the law to show how seriously God takes honoring parents, and then accuses the leaders of cancelling God's word with their own tradition. The people in the story are not small children. They are grown sons with money, leaving their old parents without help. The person Jesus is protecting is the parent, not the one who wants to hurt anyone. Nobody in the passage is told to kill anyone, and no Christian has ever been commanded to apply that law. ![Jacob Jordaens, Christ among the Pharisees: Jesus seated at a table, his hand raised, answering scribes who crowd around open books of Scripture](/codex/assets/jordaens-christ-among-the-pharisees.jpg) _Jacob Jordaens, *Christ among the Pharisees* (c. 1660-1670). Jesus answers the teachers of the law over the open Scriptures, as he does in [Matthew 15:1-20](/codex/matthew-15-1-20/). Public domain, via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christ_among_the_Pharisees.jpg)._ ## Cheatsheet **30-second reply.** *"Read verses 3 to 6. Jesus isn't commanding anything. Religious leaders had invented a vow, Corban, that let a grown son call his money 'given to God' and stop supporting his old parents. Jesus quotes the law to show how seriously God took honoring your parents, then says, 'you have made void the word of God by your tradition.' He's defending elderly parents from their sons. Nobody is told to kill anyone, and the 'children' in the story are adult men with money."* **Fast facts.** - [Matthew 15:4](/codex/matthew-15-4/) quotes two laws: "Honor thy father and thy mother" ([Exodus 20:12](/codex/exodus-20-12/)) and "he that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death" ([Exodus 21:17](/codex/exodus-21-17/); [Leviticus 20:9](/codex/leviticus-20-9/)). - The setting is the Corban vow: "That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is Corban, that is to say, Given to God" ([Mark 7:11](/codex/mark-7-11/), ASV). - Jesus' verdict is against the vow-makers: "ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition" ([Matthew 15:6](/codex/matthew-15-6/), ASV). - In Hebrew, "honor" (*kabbēd*) comes from a root meaning "heavy," and "curse" (*meqallēl*) from a root meaning "light." The law sets treating parents as weighty against treating them as worthless. - Capital sentences in Israel needed a court and at least two witnesses ([Deuteronomy 17:6](/codex/deuteronomy-17-6/)). - When the apostles repeat the command to Christians, they attach a promise and no penalty ([Ephesians 6:1](/codex/ephesians-6-1/)-3). **Concessions, and what each one collects.** - **Grant:** Jesus says "God said" ([Matthew 15:4](/codex/matthew-15-1-9/)). He treats the law as God's word. **Collect:** then take Jesus as the interpreter of that law. He used it to protect parents, and he came not to destroy the law "but to fulfil" it ([Matthew 5:17](/codex/matthew-5-17/)). His fulfilment includes a new covenant in which Israel's civil penalties are not imposed on anyone. - **Grant:** the penalty in [Exodus 21:17](/codex/exodus-21-17/) is severe by modern standards. **Collect:** that is a question about Israel's civil code, answered on its own terms at [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/). It is not what the objection claimed. "Jesus told people to kill their children" is false on the text. - **Grant:** Jesus did not say, "this law is cruel." **Collect:** he did not need to. His point was that his opponents were *breaking* the commandment by abandoning their parents. The objector is reading a defence of the vulnerable as an attack on them. **Closing line.** *"In [Matthew 15](/codex/matthew-15/) the only people Jesus condemns are grown men who left their parents to starve and called it religion."* ## In full The objection treats [Matthew 15:4](/codex/matthew-15-1-9/) (with its parallel [Mark 7:10](/codex/mark-7-10/)) as a command from Jesus to execute disobedient children. Five observations defeat it: 1. **Speech act.** The verse is a quotation inside an argument, not an instruction. Jesus cites [Exodus 20:12](/codex/exodus-20-12/) and [Exodus 21:17](/codex/exodus-21-17/) to establish the weight of the fifth commandment, then charges the Pharisees and scribes with nullifying it through the *qorbān* (Corban) vow. The imperative in the passage that applies to anyone is "honor thy father and thy mother." 2. **Offence.** The law quoted concerns *qillēl*, cursing or treating a parent with contempt, the opposite of honoring them as weighty. It stands beside striking a parent ([Exodus 21:15](/codex/exodus-21-15/)) in Israel's case law. It does not concern a child's ordinary disobedience. 3. **Persons.** The sons in view in the Corban dispute are adults with property who could have "profited" their parents. The objection's picture of a small child is not in the text. 4. **Procedure.** The penalty belonged to Israel's civil-judicial code under the Sinai covenant, imposed by a court on the testimony of witnesses ([Deuteronomy 17:6](/codex/deuteronomy-17-6/)), not by parents. 5. **Covenant.** Christians are not under Israel's civil sanctions (see [Christians Not Under Mosaic Law](/codex/christians-not-under-mosaic-law/)). The apostolic restatement of the commandment in [Ephesians 6:1](/codex/ephesians-6-1/)-3 keeps its promise and drops its penalty, and adds a command to fathers: "provoke not your children to wrath" ([Ephesians 6:4](/codex/ephesians-6-4/), ASV). The honest remainder is a question about the Mosaic penalty itself. That question deserves an answer, and it gets one at [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/) and [Rebellious Son, OT Stoning vs NT Restoration](/codex/rebellious-son-ot-stoning-vs-nt-restoration/). But it is a different objection, and it does not involve Jesus commanding anything. ## Grammar and hermeneutics 1. **"For God said" ([Matthew 15:4](/codex/matthew-15-4/)).** The clause introduces a quotation as Scripture. Mark's parallel says "For Moses said" ([Mark 7:10](/codex/mark-7-10/)). Both ways of speaking cite the same Torah, and both are citation formulas, not new legislation. 2. **"Honor" and "curse": heavy and light.** In [Exodus 20:12](/codex/exodus-20-12/) "honor" is the Hebrew *kabbēd*, from the root *kāvēd* (Strong's H3513), whose basic sense is "to be heavy, weighty." In [Exodus 21:17](/codex/exodus-21-17/) "curseth" is *meqallēl*, from *qālal* (Strong's H7043), whose basic sense is "to be light, slight." The two laws are a matched pair: give your parents their weight, or treat them as nothing. The capital law is the extreme form of the second, contempt for the people the fifth commandment protects. 3. **"Speaketh evil" ([Matthew 15:4](/codex/matthew-15-4/)).** The Greek *kakologeō* (Strong's G2551) means to revile or speak evil of. Matthew's wording follows the Greek Old Testament of [Exodus 21](/codex/exodus-21/). It does not describe a child who talks back but a person who abuses his parents with curses. 4. **"Shall surely be put to death."** The Hebrew *môt yûmāt* (the verb *mût*, "die," doubled, as the ASV's "surely... be put to death" reflects) is the standard formula of Israel's case law for a capital sentence. The passive voice places the act with the community and its judges, not with a parent. The case laws of [Exodus 21](/codex/exodus-21/) open, "Now these are the ordinances which thou shalt set before them" ([Exodus 21:1](/codex/exodus-21-1/), ASV): they are court rulings. 5. **"Corban, that is to say, Given to God" ([Mark 7:11](/codex/mark-7-11/)).** *Qorbān* (Strong's H7133) is the Levitical word for an offering brought near to God, as in "When any man of you offereth an oblation unto Jehovah" ([Leviticus 1:2](/codex/leviticus-1-2/), ASV). Mark translates it for his readers. The vow declared property dedicated to God, at least toward the parents, so that the son "shall not honor his father" ([Matthew 15:6](/codex/matthew-15-6/)). 6. **"Ye have made void" ([Matthew 15:6](/codex/matthew-15-6/); [Mark 7:13](/codex/mark-7-13/)).** The verb *akyroō* (Strong's G208) means to annul or render without authority. Jesus' accusation is legal: their tradition cancels a commandment of God. 7. **Descriptive and prescriptive.** The passage *describes* a dispute and *prescribes* only one thing, honoring parents. Reading the quoted sanction as a command to Jesus' hearers confuses the evidence in an argument with the conclusion of the argument. ## Argument structure | # | Premise | |---|---| | **P1** | Matthew 15:4 quotes the law as evidence in a rebuke; it commands no one to do anything except honor their parents. | | **P2** | The law quoted targets cursing or treating parents as worthless, by adult sons, not a child's ordinary disobedience. | | **P3** | The penalty belonged to Israel's civil courts under the Sinai covenant, with witnesses and judges, not to parents. | | **P4** | Jesus' purpose in the passage is to protect aged parents from a religious loophole. | | **P5** | Under the new covenant Christians are not under Israel's civil sanctions, and the apostles repeat the command with a promise and no penalty. | | **C** | **Matthew 15 does not teach killing children. It shows Jesus defending parents and exposing religious hypocrisy.** | ## Form The defeater is **defensive**. It refutes a specific reading of one verse by context (P1, P4), lexicography (P2), legal setting (P3) and covenantal change (P5). Each premise is independent: the objection fails if P1 alone holds, because a quotation used to rebuke is not a command. The other premises answer the follow-up objection that Jesus at least *approved* the penalty, which turns the discussion to [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/), where it belongs. --- ## P1, The verse is a quotation in a rebuke, not a command ### Affirmative case 1. **Read the question that starts the passage.** The Pharisees ask why the disciples "transgress the tradition of the elders" by not washing their hands ([Matthew 15:2](/codex/matthew-15-2/)). Jesus answers with a counter-question: "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?" ([Matthew 15:3](/codex/matthew-15-3/), ASV). Verse 4 is his evidence for that charge. 2. **The verdict names what is wrong.** "Ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition. Ye hypocrites" ([Matthew 15:6-7](/codex/matthew-15-6-7/), ASV). The fault Jesus identifies is the abandonment of parents, not a failure to execute anyone. 3. **Isaiah seals the point.** "This people honoreth me with their lips; But their heart is far from me" ([Matthew 15:8](/codex/matthew-15-8/), ASV, quoting [Isaiah 29:13](/codex/isaiah-29-13/)). The issue is religious show replacing real obedience. ### Anticipated objections 1. **"Quoting a law approvingly is endorsing it."** 2. **"Jesus could have said the penalty was wrong, and he didn't."** ### Rebuttals 1. **Endorsing a law's authority is not commanding its sentence.** Jesus affirms that the commandment came from God; he does not tell anyone to carry out a sentence, and in the passage there is no defendant, no court and no case. A lawyer who quotes a statute to prove that a duty exists is not calling for an execution. 2. **It was not the subject.** His opponents were not threatening their parents' lives. They were abandoning them. Jesus answered the sin in front of him. An argument from silence about a question nobody raised proves nothing. --- ## P2, The law targets contempt for parents, by adults ### Affirmative case 1. **The heavy-and-light pairing.** "Honor" (*kabbēd*, weighty) is answered by "curse" (*meqallēl*, light). The law punishes treating parents as worthless, the far end of what the fifth commandment forbids. 2. **Its neighbours in the code.** "He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death" ([Exodus 21:15](/codex/exodus-21-15/), ASV) stands two verses earlier. Assault and curse are grouped as the gravest attacks on parents. 3. **The sons in [Matthew 15](/codex/matthew-15/) are grown men.** The Corban vow concerns property: "That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me" ([Mark 7:11](/codex/mark-7-11/), ASV). A son who can support his parents and refuses is an adult with means, not a child. 4. **The vow was a known practice.** An Aramaic inscription on a first-century ossuary lid from Jebel Hallet et-Turi uses *qrbn* in the same dedicatory sense, as Joseph Fitzmyer showed in the *Journal of Biblical Literature* (1959). The Mishnah's tractate on vows records rabbis debating whether such a vow could be released for the honor of father and mother (*Nedarim* 9:1). Jesus is engaging a real legal practice of his day. ### Anticipated objections 1. **"Whatever the word means, cursing your parents is just words. Death for words is monstrous."** 2. **"The law says 'every one,' which includes children."** ### Rebuttals 1. **In Israel's world a curse was not a rude word.** It invoked harm and formally repudiated the parents on whom a family's land, inheritance and covenant standing depended. Whether the penalty was just is the question of [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/), and it concerns Israel's code, not anything Jesus told his hearers to do. 2. **The law's subject is a responsible person under a court.** The case law addresses people who can stand trial on the word of witnesses. No text in the Old Testament records the sentence being carried out against a child, and the related law of the stubborn son describes a glutton and drunkard brought before the elders ([Deuteronomy 21:18-21](/codex/deuteronomy-21-18-21/)). See [Rebellious Son, OT Stoning vs NT Restoration](/codex/rebellious-son-ot-stoning-vs-nt-restoration/). --- ## P3, The penalty belonged to the courts, not to parents ### Affirmative case 1. **Witnesses were required.** "At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is to die be put to death; at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death" ([Deuteronomy 17:6](/codex/deuteronomy-17-6/), ASV). 2. **The law is court law.** The section opens "these are the ordinances which thou shalt set before them" ([Exodus 21:1](/codex/exodus-21-1/), ASV), and the passive formula *môt yûmāt* assigns the act to the community. 3. **Even the hardest case takes parents out of the role of judge.** In [Deuteronomy 21:18-21](/codex/deuteronomy-21-18-21/) both parents must bring the son to the elders at the gate; the elders decide. In a world where Roman fathers held legal power of life and death over their sons, Israel's law put the decision in public hands. ### Anticipated objections 1. **"Procedure doesn't make a death penalty moral."** ### Rebuttals 1. **Agreed, and the defeater does not claim it does.** It claims something narrower: the verse does not license parents to kill children, and the objection's picture of a parent doing so is false. The justice of the civil penalty is weighed at [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/) and [Theocratic Context of Mosaic Law](/codex/theocratic-context-of-mosaic-law/). --- ## P4, Jesus' purpose is to protect parents ### Affirmative case 1. **The whole complaint is about neglect.** Jesus condemns men who would not "do aught for his father or his mother" ([Mark 7:12](/codex/mark-7-12/), ASV). The victims are elderly parents left without support. 2. **Jesus practised what he taught.** From the cross he gave his mother into the care of the disciple he loved: "Behold, thy mother! And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home" ([John 19:27](/codex/john-19-26-27/), ASV). 3. **The apostles keep the same duty.** "If any provideth not for his own, and specially his own household, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever" ([1 Timothy 5:8](/codex/1-timothy-5-8/), ASV). ### Anticipated objections 1. **"Fine, but the means Jesus cites to make his point is a death penalty."** ### Rebuttals 1. **He cites it to show how much God values parents.** The argument runs from the greater to the lesser: if God's law treated contempt for parents as a capital matter, how can a man claim piety while leaving them destitute? The severity of the law is the measure of the duty, not an instruction to apply the sentence. --- ## P5, Christians are not under Israel's civil sanctions ### Affirmative case 1. **The covenant changed.** "In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old" ([Hebrews 8:13](/codex/hebrews-8-13/), ASV). Israel's civil penalties belonged to Israel as a nation under the Sinai covenant. See [Christians Not Under Mosaic Law](/codex/christians-not-under-mosaic-law/). 2. **The command survives, the penalty does not.** "Honor thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth" ([Ephesians 6:2-3](/codex/ephesians-6-2-3/), ASV). Paul keeps the promise and drops the sanction. 3. **The new covenant adds a word to parents.** "And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord" ([Ephesians 6:4](/codex/ephesians-6-4/), ASV). 4. **Jesus' picture of a rebellious son is the prodigal.** The father "ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" ([Luke 15:20](/codex/luke-15-20/), ASV). See [Luke 15:11-32](/codex/luke-15-11-32/). ### Anticipated objections 1. **"Jesus said not one jot of the law would pass away, so the penalty still stands."** ### Rebuttals 1. **He said he came to fulfil it.** "I came not to destroy, but to fulfil" ([Matthew 5:17](/codex/matthew-5-17/), ASV). The church has never read that as an order to enforce Israel's civil code, and the apostles, who heard him, did not apply it. Fulfilment includes the cross, where Christ "redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us" ([Galatians 3:13](/codex/galatians-3-13/), ASV). See [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/) for the four main Christian accounts of how the civil law relates to the church. --- ## Master objections to the whole argument - **"You're explaining away a plain verse."** The plain reading is the contextual one. Verses 3 and 6 frame verse 4, and both are about the Corban loophole. Pulling one sentence out of an argument and calling it a command is the opposite of plain reading. - **"Even if Jesus didn't command it, he believed God once commanded it, and that God is a monster."** That is a different objection, about the Old Testament civil code, and the codex answers it at [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/). Notice what has happened: the claim moved from "Jesus said kill your kids" to "the Mosaic law was too severe." The first claim is gone. - **"Christians pick and choose which laws to follow."** The distinction between Israel's civil code and the moral law is not a modern dodge. The apostles drew it in the first generation ([Acts 15](/codex/acts-15/)), and Paul repeats the fifth commandment while omitting its sanction. ## Tactical lines **Opening.** *"Before we talk about verse 4, can you read me verses 3 and 6? What is Jesus accusing these men of?"* **Force-commit.** *"Is your claim that Jesus told someone to kill a child, or that the Old Testament law had a death penalty? Those are different claims, and only one is in this passage."* **Closing.** *"The only people condemned in [Matthew 15](/codex/matthew-15/) are grown men who left their parents without help and called it religion. Jesus is on the parents' side."* ## Live-cite kit - **Scripture:** [Matthew 15:1-20](/codex/matthew-15-1-20/), the dispute in full; [Mark 7:6-13](/codex/mark-7-6-13/), the Corban parallel; [Exodus 20:12](/codex/exodus-20-12/) and [Exodus 21:17](/codex/exodus-21-17/), the two laws quoted; [Deuteronomy 17:6](/codex/deuteronomy-17-6/), two witnesses; [Ephesians 6:1](/codex/ephesians-6-1/)-4, the command repeated with a promise; [John 19:26-27](/codex/john-19-26-27/), Jesus providing for his mother. - **Scholarly:** R. T. France, *The Gospel of Matthew* (2007), and William L. Lane, *The Gospel of Mark* (1974), on the Corban dispute; Joseph Fitzmyer, *Journal of Biblical Literature* 78 (1959), on the *qorbān* inscription; Paul Copan, *Is God a Moral Monster?* (2011), on the Mosaic civil code. - **Aphorism:** *"Quoting a law to convict a hypocrite is not ordering an execution."* ## Connection to Scripture - [Matthew 15:1-20](/codex/matthew-15-1-20/), the dispute over tradition and the commandment - [Mark 7:6-13](/codex/mark-7-6-13/), the parallel, with the word Corban - [Exodus 20:12](/codex/exodus-20-12/), honor father and mother - [Exodus 21:15](/codex/exodus-21-15/); [Exodus 21:17](/codex/exodus-21-17/); [Leviticus 20:9](/codex/leviticus-20-9/), the capital laws on striking and cursing parents - [Deuteronomy 17:6](/codex/deuteronomy-17-6/), two or three witnesses - [Isaiah 29:13](/codex/isaiah-29-13/), lips near, heart far - [Ephesians 6:1](/codex/ephesians-6-1/)-4, the commandment in the church - [John 19:26-27](/codex/john-19-26-27/), Jesus entrusts his mother to John ## Patristic / scholarly note **Modern:** - R. T. France (*The Gospel of Matthew*, 2007), commentary on [Matthew 15:1-20](/codex/matthew-15-1-20/) - William L. Lane (*The Gospel of Mark*, 1974), commentary on [Mark 7:1-13](/codex/mark-7-1-13/) - Joseph A. Fitzmyer ("The Aramaic Qorban Inscription from Jebel Hallet et-Turi and [Mark 7:11](/codex/mark-7-11/)/[Matt 15:5](/codex/matthew-15-5/)," *JBL* 78, 1959), the dedicatory formula in first-century use - Paul Copan (*Is God a Moral Monster?*, 2011), the Mosaic civil code in its setting ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Paul Copan, *Is God a Moral Monster?* (2011). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL39629035W) - R. T. France, *The Gospel of Matthew* (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2007). [doi:10.5040/bci-000r](https://doi.org/10.5040/bci-000r) - William L. Lane, *The Gospel of Mark: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes* (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1974). [doi:10.5040/bci-000f](https://doi.org/10.5040/bci-000f) ## See also - [Mosaic Capital Punishment](/codex/mosaic-capital-punishment/), the full survey of Israel's capital laws and the Christian responses - [Rebellious Son, OT Stoning vs NT Restoration](/codex/rebellious-son-ot-stoning-vs-nt-restoration/), the companion case of [Deuteronomy 21:18-21](/codex/deuteronomy-21-18-21/) - [Christians Not Under Mosaic Law](/codex/christians-not-under-mosaic-law/), why the church does not apply Israel's civil sanctions - [Theocratic Context of Mosaic Law](/codex/theocratic-context-of-mosaic-law/), why Israel's penalties belonged to a unique polity - [Mosaic Law](/codex/mosaic-law/), the parent hub - [Arguments](/codex/arguments/), master index
## Common questions this page answers **Q: Did Jesus say to kill disobedient children in [Matthew 15:4](/codex/matthew-15-4/)?** No. Jesus quotes the law that cursing a parent was a capital offense in order to show how seriously God took honoring parents. His target is religious leaders who used the Corban vow to stop supporting their aging parents. He commands no one to kill anyone; the only command in the passage is to honor your father and mother. **Q: What is Corban in [Mark 7](/codex/mark-7/)?** Corban (Hebrew *qorbān*) means an offering given to God. In Jesus' day a man could declare property Corban, dedicated to God, and then refuse to use it to help his parents. Jesus condemned this as cancelling God's commandment by human tradition ([Mark 7:11](/codex/mark-7-11/)). **Q: Did Jesus agree with the Old Testament death penalty for cursing parents?** Jesus treats the law as God's word, but in [Matthew 15](/codex/matthew-15/) he cites it only to prove that honoring parents is a weighty duty. The penalty belonged to Israel's civil courts under the Sinai covenant, required witnesses and judges, and is not applied in the new covenant; when Paul repeats the commandment for Christians he keeps the promise and drops the penalty. **Q: Does "curse your father or mother" mean a child talking back?** No. The Hebrew word for "curse" comes from a root meaning "light" or "worthless," the opposite of the word for "honor," which means "heavy" or "weighty." The law addresses treating parents with contempt and repudiating them, grouped with striking a parent, not ordinary childish disobedience. **Q: Are Christians supposed to follow the Old Testament death penalties?** No. Those penalties belonged to Israel as a nation under the Sinai covenant. The New Testament describes that covenant as made old by the new one ([Hebrews 8:13](/codex/hebrews-8-13/)), and the apostles never applied Israel's civil sanctions in the church.