5th Commandment: Honor Your Father and Mother

So we've looked at commands 1 through 4, and we've pointed out that all of these are emphasizing your relationship with God. Yeah, honor me alone, don't make any physical representations of God, don't carry the name of Yahweh your Elohim for a futile purpose, and honor the seventh-day rest. That's commands 1 through 4, humans relating to God. What's interesting is commands 6 through 10, don't kill, don't adulterize, don't steal, and don't bear false witness, don't covet or desire what isn't yours. Those are all very clearly about you and other humans. And then in between them is command number 5, the hinge between how you relate to God and how you relate to your neighbor. Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your Elohim gives you. How you relate to God is really connected to how you relate to these two humans. Notice the your is repeated, your father, your mother, your Elohim. Your father and your mother are the ones who gave you life. And your Elohim is the one who gives you a land where you can have life. So how I relate to somebody who generated and sustained my existence, that's a unique relationship and that needs to be treated in a special way. And that special way is called honor. It comes from the Hebrew verb kabeid. It means to be heavy, to have physical weight. Okay, weightiness or like gravity. Totally, it's important. Yeah, it's meaningful. So you treat them as having significance. So for example, here's Proverbs 14, 31. The one who oppresses the poor taunts his maker. Acting unfairly towards someone who has less than you, you are making fun of his creator. Wow, that's heavy. Staggering implications. But then the one who is generous to the needy honors him. You're saying you're worth having something.

But then also you are honoring the creator of that person. So honoring your parents is about respecting them. However, honoring can and does refer in the Hebrew Bible to sharing and generosity and economic support. So what is very interesting is that is certainly how Jesus took this command right here. He says, listen, Moses said honor your father and mother. But you say that if anyone says to his father and mother, hey, mom and dad, I know you were expecting to get support from me in your old age. But the money that I set aside to do that for you, I dedicated it as a gift to God to offer to the temple. Sorry. And so there apparently was a loophole where what you give to your parents could be lessened to prioritize that money as a gift to God. And Jesus is like, that's so backwards. Jesus is pretty frustrated. Honoring your father and mother, I think for Jesus, is how you honor God. They cared for you and generated you and you can reciprocate that care for them. And something about that reciprocation of care results in prolonged days in the land. How does a community have long, multigenerational life? Yeah. It's through reciprocal care within the community. So our parents gave us life when they were young and we can help sustain their life when they're old. And it's this reciprocity of care. This is the only command in the list with a promise. So that you'll have long life in the land. Yes. And for Jesus, this command wasn't just about our own biological fathers and mothers. I think what made the early Jesus movement so socially powerful was how they created a sense of family bonds beyond the actual physical lineage and kinship. And so Jesus actually wants us to expand the scope of the fifth commandment. The people of God are to esteem the elderly. Yeah. And take care of widows and honor all of those who gave us life. And when we do that, we honor God and we create a community that thrives.

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