Exodus 20:12

Honour thy father and thy mother, c] Which is the fifth commandment of the decalogue, but is the first commandment with promise, as the apostle says, Ephesians 6:2 and is the first of the second

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

The word honour doth not only note the reverence, love, and obedience we owe them, but also support and maintenance, as appears from , and from the like signification of that word, ,17, which is so natural and necessary a duty, that the Jews say a man is bound even to beg, or to work with his hands, that he may relieve his parents. The father is put first here, and the mother , to show that we owe this duty promiscuously and indifferently to both of them. Compare ,17 Deuteronomy 21:18 27:16 30:17. And because these laws are brief, and yet comprehensive, under these are contained all our superiors and governors. That thy days may be long, Heb. that they, i.e. thy parents, may prolong thy days, or the days of thy life, to wit, instrumentally, by their prayers made to God for thee, and by their blessing in my name conferred upon thee; though the active verb is commonly taken impersonally, as ; and so it may be here, they prolong, for be prolonged.

Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.Ver. 12. Honour thy father, &c.] Philo well! observeth, that this fifth commandment, which therefore he maketh a branch of the first table, and so divides the tables equally, is a mixed commandment, εντολημικτη; and differs somewhat from the rest of those in the second table. They consider man as our neighbour, in nature like us: this, as God’ s deputy, by him set over us, and in his name, and by his authority, performing offices about us. That thy days may be long.] A good child lengtheneth his father’ s days; therefore God promiseth to lengthen his. Ill children, as they bring their parents’ "gray hairs with sorrow to the grave"; so they are many times cut off in the midst of their days, as Abimelech was: God rendering upon him the evil that he did to his father. Besides the punishment they have in their posterity, to whom they have been peremptores potius quam parentes. One complained, that never father had so undutiful a child as he had: yes, said his son, with less grace than truth, my grandfather had. Bernard.

(12) Honour thy father and thy mother.—It is not a matter of much importance how we divide the commandments; nor is it historically certain how they were originally distributed between the two tables. But, practically, the view that the fifth commandment begins the second table, which lays down our duty towards our neighbours, is to be preferred for its convenience, though it trenches upon symmetrical arrangement. Of all our duties to our fellow-men, the first and most fundamental is our duty towards our parents, which lies at the root of all our social relations, and is the first of which we naturally become conscious. Honour, reverence, and obedience are due to parents from the position in which they stand to their children :—(1) As, in a certain sense, the authors of their being; (2) as their shelterers and nourishers; (3) as their protectors and educators, from whom they derive the foundation of their moral training and the first elements of their knowledge. Even among savages the obligations of children towards their parents are felt and acknowledged to a greater or a less extent; and there has never been a civilised community of whose moral code they have not formed an important part. In Egypt the duty of filial piety was strictly inculcated from a very early date (Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne, vol. i., pp. 342, 343), and a bad son forfeited the prospect of happiness in another life (ibid., pp. 513, 514). Confucianism bases all morality upon the parental and filial relation, and requires the most complete subjection, even of the grown-up son, to his father and mother. Greek ethics taught that the relation of children to their parents was parallel to that of men to God (Aristot. Eth. Nic. 8:12, § 5); and Rome made the absolute authority of the father the basis of its entire State system. The Divine legislation of Sinai is in full accord, here as elsewhere, with the voice of reason and conscience, affirming broadly the principles of parental authority and filial submission, but leaving the mode in which the principles should be carried out to the discretion of individuals or communities. That thy days may be long upon the land.—The fifth commandment (as all allow) is “the first commandment with promise” (Ephesians 6:2); but the promise may be understood in two quite different senses. (1) It may be taken as guaranteeing national permanence to the people among whom filial respect and obedience is generally practised; or (2) it may be understood in the simpler and more literal sense of a pledge that obedient children shall, as a general rule, receive for their reward the blessing of long life. In favour of the former view have been urged the facts of Roman and Chinese permanence, together with the probability that Israel forfeited its possession of Canaan in consequence of persisting in the breach of this commandment. In favour of the latter may be adduced the application of the text by St.

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT Against disrespect and disobedience to parents. Verse 12. Honour thy father and thy mother] There is a degree of affectionate respect which is owing to parents, that no person else can properly claim. For a considerable time parents stand as it were in the place of God to their children, and therefore rebellion against their lawful commands has been considered as rebellion against God. This precept therefore prohibits, not only all injurious acts, irreverent and unkind speeches to parents, but enjoins all necessary acts of kindness, filial respect, and obedience. We can scarcely suppose that a man honours his parents who, when they fall weak, blind, or sick, does not exert himself to the uttermost in their support. In such cases God as truly requires the children to provide for their parents, as he required the parents to feed, nourish, support, instruct, and defend the children when they were in the lowest state of helpless in fancy. See Clarke on Genesis 48:12. The rabbins say, Honour the Lord with thy substance, Proverbs 3:9; and, Honour thy father and mother. The LORD is to be honoured thus if thou have it; thy father and mother, whether thou have it or not; for if thou have nothing, thou art bound to beg for them. See Ainsworth. That thy days may be long] This, as the apostle observes, Ephesians 6:2, is the first commandment to which God has annexed a promise; and therefore we may learn in some measure how important the duty is in the sight of God. In Deuteronomy 5:16 it is said, And that it may go well with thee; we may therefore conclude that it will go ill with the disobedient; and there is no doubt that the untimely deaths of many young persons are the judicial consequence of their disobedience to their parents. Most who come to an untimely end are obliged to confess that this, with the breach of the Sabbath, was the principal cause of their ruin. Reader, art thou guilty? Humble thyself therefore before God, and repent. 1. As children are bound to succour their parents, so parents are bound to educate and instruct their children in all useful and necessary knowledge, and not to bring them up either in ignorance or idleness. 2. They should teach their children the fear and knowledge of God, for how can they expect affection or dutiful respect from those who have not the fear of God before their eyes? Those who are best educated are generally the most dutiful. Heathens also inculcated respect to parents. Ουδενπροςθεωντιμιωτεροναγαλμαανκτησαιμεθαπατροςκαιπροπατοροςπαρειμενωνγηρᾳ, καιμητερωντηναυτηνδυναμινεχουσων·οὑςὁυταναγαλλῃτις, τιμαιςγεγηθενὁθεος. - Παςδηνουνεχωνφοβειταικαιτιμᾳ, γονενωνευχαςειδωςπολλοιςκαιπολλακιςεπιτελειςγενομενας. Plato de Leg., lib. xi., vol. ix, p. 160. Ed. Bipont.

12. The fifth commandment. Honour to be paid to parents. Cf. in H Leviticus 19:3. The position accorded to parents is a high one: they are mentioned in the first table of the Decalogue, and duty towards them stands next to duties towards God (so in Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9 [H] the penalty for cursing them is the same, viz. death, as the penalty for blaspheming God, Leviticus 24:15 f. [H]). Cf. the development of the command in Sir 3:1-16; and the warnings addressed to those who disregard it, Proverbs 20:20; Pro_Exodus 30:17 (cf. 11). In the NT. see Matthew 15:4-6 (||Mark 7:10-13). As Kn. ap. Di. shews, the command is in the spirit of the best minds of antiquity: Plato, for instance (Legg. iv. 717 c–d), lays it down that after the gods and demi-gods parents ought to have the most honour, and that through his whole life every man should pay his parents the utmost deference and respect (cf. xi. 930 e–932 a); and Aristotle, Eth. Nic. ix. 2, 8, says that it is proper to pay them ‘honour such as is given to the gods’ (τιμὴνκαθάπερθεοῖς): other Greek writers also speak similarly. Cf. further on Exodus 21:15. that thy days may be long &c.] The ‘first commandment with promise’ (Ephesians 6:2). A spirit of filial respect implies a well-ordered life in general; and so tends to secure prosperity both to the individual and to the nation (the commandments are addressed throughout not only to the individual as such, but also to the individual as representing the nation). The terms of the promise are strongly Deuteronomic: see Deuteronomy 6:2; Deuteronomy 25:15, and (in the form ‘prolong days’) Deuteronomy 4:26; Deuteronomy 4:40, Deuteronomy 5:33, Deuteronomy 11:9, Deuteronomy 17:20, Deuteronomy 22:7, Deuteronomy 30:18, Deuteronomy 32:47; and, for the following clause, upon the land, &c., Deuteronomy 3:20, Deuteronomy 11:17; Deuteronomy 11:31, Deuteronomy 15:7, Deuteronomy 16:20, Deuteronomy 17:14, Deuteronomy 18:9, &c., and especially Deuteronomy 4:40, Deuteronomy 25:15. giveth] is giving (i.e. is in the course of giving, is about to give); so in all the passages of Dt. just quoted (and in many similar ones in the same book besides). The standpoint of the Exodus is assumed. The land is not, as ‘giveth’ in itself might suggest, the possession of the individual Israelite, but Canaan.

THE FIFTH , Exodus 20:12. 12. Honour thy father and thy mother — This commandment belongs properly to the “first table,” as we have shown above, for it inculcates a form of piety as distinguished from morality.