Rebellion against the Father as a Rebellion against a King and Priest

I've argued before that the father is a king and a priest. He is both a government with the right to physically punish and set decrees as well as a spiritual government with the right to set the spiritual rules over his household.

The Apostolic Constitutions say this about rebellion against either role.

"Let us therefore, beloved, consider what sort of glory that of the seditious is, and what their condemnation. For if he that rises up against kings is worthy of punishment, even though he be a son or a friend, how much more he that rises up against the priests! For by how much the priesthood is more noble than the royal power, as having its concern about the soul, so much has he a greater punishment who ventures to oppose the priesthood, than he who ventures to oppose the royal power, although neither of them goes unpunished" (6.2).

This may help us understand why the penalty for a son to even insult his father, or speak poorly of him, demands death throughout Scripture.

Exodus 21:17 states, "“Whoever curses his father or his mother is to be put to death."

Deuteronomy 27:16 says, “‘Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’"

Leviticus 20:9 states, "For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him."

The text begins with כי continuing the idea that was before it. The statement before it is that the people are to be set apart, holy, i.e., not like the people's of the surrounding nations and cultures. They were to be different, and the first thing God wants to say about their differentiation from the nations is that they were to be different in how they thought of and treated their parents.

In fact, the Hebrew is emphatic that he absolutely must be put to death for it. Where some laws may have had wiggle room in their penalties, this one had none.

In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, the severity of  rebellion against a parent is communicated by God's wrathful command toward a son who engages in it.

“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear."

It is important to notice that the parents are not allowed to let it go, nor are the elders. A son who is under his parents' household, uses their resources, not to mature into an adult who will take the responsibility of the creation mandate and continue their household through fatherhood, but to become even more irresponsible and wicked is to be executed by the entire community, not just the parents.

Proverbs 30:17 indicates that God will enact a severe punishment on even the one who has a bad attitude or thinks poorly of his parents. "The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures."

These commands are not referring to little children, but grown children. I doubt many young children are becoming drunkards in their parents' household. Furthermore, texts like Proverbs 23:22 indicate that the commands to obey and listen to one's parents extend to when they are older (and obviously still in the household). "Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old." If the mother is old, then the time of listening and not despising them is when the son is older and grown.

There are so many other passages that one could bring up, but it is clear that the Bible has no tolerance for rebellion of any kind whatsoever to parents, and especially, to the father (in the biblical model the mother is one with the father, so both parents are put together).

But why is this? I've argued before that I think the fact that the command to honor/obey one's father and mother is a part of one's direct worship or repudiation of God and His authority. Instead of breaking up the commands between four and six, the Ten Commandments is broken up between five and five. It may be that how one treats his father and mother bleeds over into the commands concerning how one treats fellow covenant members on the horizontal plain, but that it is primarily meant to communicate how one treats God, i.e., evidencing the vertical relationship.

There is some indication of this in Leviticus 19:3, "Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God." Notice how these are linked together. In Leviticus 19, whenever God says, "I am the Lord your God," He ends a unit and begins another, linking the two or more elements together as one. Observing God's sovereignty in the Sabbath (something a failure to do also brings about the death penalty) is linked to observing God's sovereignty through the authority of his parents.

What this means is that to think poorly, speak poorly, act poorly toward one's parents is to think, speak, and act poorly toward God. It is, in fact, to blaspheme the Almighty and make a mockery of his authority. Hence, it is met with severe and unwavering punishment.

In this way, the father, as king and priest, as well as the mother who is the ambassador of the father, represents God and His authority. To disrespect their authority, to rebel, to do what one wants that is contrary to theirs, is to disrespect and rebel against God Himself.

To rebel against a king is to rebel against a ruler God has set over the household. To rebel against a priest is to do the same.

Unfortunately, in America, the father is a joke. He's a bumbling moron on every TV show, and has filled his head with worldly wisdom rather than that of God. Why would anyone listen to him? There is no king and priest in America except the self. We are the lords of our own destinies and the masters of our own soul. Listening to our fathers is optional, and if they haven't filled their heads with godly wisdom, it may even be dangerous. Fathers are viewed as tyrants if they govern as king, and hypocrites if they govern as priests (no prophet was ever received in his own home after all). But these commands express God's disposition toward a person's rebellion or dishonoring of his parents, and one would only lack care toward these things if, in fact, he was a fool without the fear of God. The father is no joke to God. He is his representative to the child, and that position demands the same fear that one has for God. The terrifying thing is that those who treat their parents in such ways likely do evidence that fact.