Changing up my drawing just a bit. Thicker lines and just using black for outlines. I feel it pops more than doing an outline of a darker color, it also allows those darker colors to be used in fills as well.

I have seen this one thrown around in the past as a reason we don’t follow the Law. But, as I am summarizing from the right picture, this is yet another misconception. The biggest thing we can see from this passage is that this isn’t just a kid who refuses to keep their room clean. This is a much older, most likely, adult child who is not obeying what their parents taught them growing up and is now a burden in the camp. In the description of this son he is refusing to obey his parents, breaking one of God’s commands. If one is being broken, most likely there are others as well. This son is not being part of the people. Thus we have the verdict listed in verse 21 if the elders find him guilty of the son being stoned.

That last part is another important fact about this command, there is a trial here. It isn’t just the parents tired of telling their kid for the millionth time to stop chasing the dog around the house and then stoning them. This is something that the parents are seeing as an issue and are bringing them to the elders, the ones with experience, and asking them about it. While it doesn’t explicitly state that the elders may give a “not guilty” verdict, the fact that they are to bring them to the elders heavily implies it. Moses set up the elders to judge matters. It wasn’t just for them to just order the killing of someone without looking into the situation.

This is another error of reading the Bible in bubbles (reading it here and there) and not reading it as one story and keeping everything that has happened in mind for context. Things like the definition of what an “elder” is can easily be missed or misunderstood.