I am not ignorant that the Tables of the Law are usually divided in a different manner; (1) for those, who make only one of the first two Commandments, are obliged finally to mangle the last. Thus the prohibition of God to covet either our neighbor’s wife or his house, is foolishly separated into two parts, whereas it is quite clear that only one thing is treated of, as we gather from the words of Paul, who quotes them as a single Commandment. (Rom 7:7.) There is, however, no need of a lengthened discussion here, since the fact itself explains how one error has grown out of another; for, when they had improperly hidden the Second Commandment under the First, and consequently did not find the right number, they were forced to divide into two parts what was one and indivisible. A frivolous reason is assigned by Augustine why they comprised the First Table in three commandments, viz., that believers might learn to worship God in the Trinity, and thus to adore one God in three persons. By inconsiderately trifling with such subtleties, they have exposed God’s law to the mockeries of the ungodly. Josephus (2) indeed rightly enumerates the Commandments themselves in their proper order, but improperly attributes five Commandments to each Table; as if God had had regard to arithmetic rather than to instruct His people separately in the duties of charity, after having laid down for them the rules of piety. For up to this point the rule of rightly serving God has been delivered, i. e. , the First Table embraces a summary of piety; and now the Law will begin to show how men ought to live with each other, otherwise one Table would have been enough, nor would God have divided his Law without a purpose. But whereas piety (3) and justice comprise the perfect rule for the direction of our lives, it was necessary to distinguish these two parts, that the people might understand the object of the Law, of which we shall again speak hereafter.

Exo 20:12

. Honor thy father Although charity (as being “the bond of perfectness,” Col 3:14) contains the sum of the Second Table, still, mutual obligation does not prevent either parents or others, who are in authority, from retaining their proper position. Nay, human society cannot be maintained in its integrity, unless children modestly submit themselves to their parents, and unless those, who are set over others by God’s ordinance, are even reverently honored. But inasmuch as the reverence which children pay to their parents is accounted a sort of piety, some have therefore foolishly placed this precept in the First Table. Nor are they supported in this by Paul, though he does not enumerate this Commandment, where he collects the sum of the Second Table, (Rom 13:9😉 for he does this designedly, because he is there expressly teaching that obedience is to be paid to the authority of kings and magistrates. Christ, however, puts an end to the whole controversy, where, among the precepts of the Second Table, He enumerates this, that children should honor their parents. (Mat 19:19.)

The name of the mothers is expressly introduced, lest their sex should render them contemptible to their male children.

It will be now well to ascertain what is the force of the word “honor,” not as to its grammatical meaning, (for כבד, cabad, is nothing else but to pay due honor to God, and to men who are in authority,) but as to its essential signification. Surely, since God would not have His servants comply with external ceremonies only, it cannot be doubted but that all the duties of piety towards parents are here comprised, to which children are laid under obligation by natural reason itself; and these may be reduced to three heads, i e. , that they should regard them with reverence; that they should obediently comply with their commands, and allow themselves to be governed by them; and that they should endeavor to repay what they owe to them, and thus heartily devote to them themselves and their services. Since, therefore, the name of Father is a sacred one, and is transferred to men by the peculiar goodness of God, the dishonoring of parents redounds to the dishonor of God Himself, nor can any one despise his father without being guilty of an offense against God, ( sacrilegium.) If any should object that there are many ungodly and wicked fathers whom their children cannot regard with honor without destroying the distinction between good and evil, the reply is easy, that the perpetual law of nature is not subverted by the sins of men; and therefore, however unworthy of honor a father may be, that he still retains, inasmuch as he is a father, his right over his children, provided it does not in anywise derogate from the judgment of God; for it is too absurd to think of absolving under any pretext the sins which are condemned by His Law; nay, it would be a base profanation to misuse the name of father for the covering of sins. In condemning, therefore, the vices of a father, a truly pious son will subscribe to God’s Law; and still, whatsoever he may be, will acknowledge that he is to be honored, as being the father given him by God.

Obedience comes next, which is also circumscribed by certain limits. Paul is a faithful interpreter of this Commandment, where he bids “children obey their parents.” (Eph 6:1; Col 3:20.) Honor, therefore, comprises subjection; so that he who shakes off the yoke of his father, and does not allow himself to be governed by his authority, is justly said to despise his father; and it will more clearly appear from other passages, that those who are not obedient to their parents are deemed to despise them. Still, the power of a father is so limited as that God, on whom all relationships depend, should have the rule over fathers as well as children; for parents govern their children only under the supreme authority of God. Paul, therefore, does not simply exhort children to obey their parents, but adds the restriction, “in the Lord;” whereby he indicates that, if a father enjoins anything unrighteous, obedience is freely to be denied him. Immoderate strictness, moroseness, and even cruelty must be born, so long as a mortal man, by wickedly demanding what is not lawful, does not endeavor to rob God of His right. In a word, the Law so subjects children to their parents, as that God’s right may remain uninfringed. An objection here arises in the shape of this question: It may sometimes happen that a son may hold the office of a magistrate, but that the father may be a private person, and that thus the son cannot discharge his private duty without violating public order. The point is easily solved: that all things may be so tempered by their mutual moderation as that, whilst the father submits himself to the government of his son, (4) yet he may not be at all defrauded of his honor, and that the son, although his superior in power, may still modestly reverence his father.

The third head of honor is, that children should take care of their parents, and be ready and diligent in all their duties towards them. This kind of piety the Greeks call ἀντιπελαργία, (5) because storks supply food to their parents when they are feeble and worn out with old age, and are thus our instructors in gratitude. Hence the barbarity of those is all the more base and detestable, who either grudge or neglect to relieve the poverty of their parents, and to aid their necessities.

Now, although the parental name ought, by its own sweetness, sufficiently to attract children to ready submission, still a promise is added as a stimulus, in order that they may more cheerfully bestir themselves to pay the honor which is enjoined upon them. Paul, therefore, that children may be more willing to obey their parents, reminds us that this “is the first commandment with promise,” (Eph 6:2😉 for although a promise is annexed to the Second Commandment, yet it is not a special one, as we perceive this to be. The reward, that the days of children who have behaved themselves piously to their parents shall be prolonged, aptly corresponds with the observance of the commandment, since in this manner God gives us a proof of His favor in this life, when we have been grateful to those to whom we are indebted for it; whilst it is by no means just that they should greatly prolong their life who despise those progenitors by whom they have been brought into it. Here the question arises, since this earthly life is exposed to so many cares, and pains, and troubles, how can God account its prolongation to be a blessing? But whereas all cares spring from the curse of God, it is manifest that they are accidental; and thus, if life be regarded in itself, it does not cease to be a proof of God’s favor. Besides, all this multitude of miseries does not destroy the chief blessing of life, viz., that men are created and preserved unto the hope of a happy immortality; for God now manifests Himself to them as a Father, that hereafter they may enjoy His eternal inheritance. The knowledge of this, like a lighted lamp, causes God’s grace to shine forth in the midst of darkness. Whence it follows, that those had not tasted the main thing in life, (6) who have said that the best thing was not to be born, and the next best thing to be cut off as soon as possible; whereas God rather so exercises men by various afflictions, as that it should be good for them nevertheless to be created in His image, and to be accounted His children. A clearer explanation also is added in Deuteronomy, not only that they should live, but that it may go well with them; so that not only is length of life promised them, but other accessories also. And in fact, many who have been ungrateful and unkind to their parents only prolong their life as a punishment, whilst the reward of their inhuman conduct is repaid them by their children and descendants. But inasmuch as long life is not vouchsafed to all who have discharged the duties of piety towards their parents, it must be remembered that, with respect to temporal rewards, an infallible law is by no means laid down; and still, where God works variously and unequally, His promises are not made void, because a better compensation is secured in heaven for believers, who have been deprived on earth of transitory blessings. Truly experience in all ages has shown that God has not in vain promised long life to all who have faithfully discharged the duties of true piety towards their parents. Still, from the principle already stated, it is to be understood that this Commandment extends further than the words imply; and this we infer from the following sound argument, viz., that otherwise God’s Law would be imperfect, and would not instruct us in the perfect rule of a just and holy life.

The natural sense itself dictates to us that we should obey rulers. If servants obey not their masters, the society of the human race is subverted altogether. It is not, therefore, the least essential part of righteousness (7) that the people should willingly submit themselves to the command of magistrates, and that servants should obey their masters; and, consequently, it would be very absurd if it were omitted in the Law of God. In this commandment, then, as in the others, God by synecdoche embraces, under a specific rule, a general principle, viz., that lawful commands should obtain due reverence from us. But that all things should not be distinctly expressed, first of all brevity itself readily accounts for; and, besides, another reason is to be noticed, i. e. that God designedly used a homely style in addressing a rude people, because He saw its expediency. If He had said generally, that all superiors were to be obeyed, since, pride is natural to all, it would not have been easy to incline the greater part of men to pay submission to a few. Nay, since subjection is naturally disagreeable, many would have kicked against it. God, therefore, propounds a specific kind of subjection, which it would have been gross barbarism to refuse, that thus, their ferocity being gradually subdued, He might accustom men to bear the yoke. Hence the exhortations are derived, that people should “honor the king;” that “every soul should be subject unto the higher powers;” that “servants should obey their masters, even the froward and morose.” (Pro 24:21; 1Pe 2:13; Rom 13:1; Eph 6:5; 1Pe 2:14.)

(1) See Becon’s Catechism, part 3, (Parker Society’s edition,) p. 60, et seq. See also Bullinger’s Decades, (Parker Society,) vol. 1, p. 212; and Hooper’s Early Writings, (Parker Society,) pages 349-351; and Calvin’s Institutes, lib. 2. cap. 8, Section 12. It appears that this error may be traced to Augustine, (Quaest. in Exo 71:0, and Ep. ad. Jan. 119,) who, without omitting the Second Commandment, divided the precepts of the First Table into three, on the supposition that their number was allusive to the Trinity. He, however, contradicts himself elsewhere, (Quaest. Vet. et Novi Test., lib. 1:7;) but Peter Lomb. adopts his erroneous division, and separates the Tenth Commandment into two parts. (Lib. 3, Distinct. 37 and 40.)

(2) See Jewish Antiq., book 3. chap. 5. Section 5. In sect. 8 it is added: “When he had said this he showed them two tables, with the ten commandments engraven upon them, five upon each table; and the writing was by the hand of God.”

(3) “La piete que nous devons a Dieu, et l’equite que nous devons a nos prochains;” the piety which we owe to God, and the equity which we owe to our neighbors. — Fr.

(4) There is a delightful illustration of this point, which will occur to many, related in More ’ s Life of Sir Thomas More, ch. 6. Section 5, — “Now it was a comfortable thing for ante man to behold how two great rooms of Westminster-hall were taken up, one with the son, the other with the father, which hath as yet never been heard of before or since, the son to be Lord Chancellor, and the father, Sir John More, to be one of the ancientest Judges of the King’s Bench, if not the eldest of all; for now he was near 90 year old. Yea, what a grateful spectacle was it, to see the son ask the father’s blessing every day upon his knees, before he sat in his own seat, a thing expressing rare humility, exemplar obedience, and submissive piety.”

(5) “Let us consider what is meant by the Gentiles’ ἀντιπελαργεῖν, which is to requite one good turn with another; and especially to nourish and cherish them, by whom thou thyself in thy youth was brought up and tendered. There is among the Gentiles a law extant, worthy to be called the mistress of piety, whereby it is enacted that the children should either nourish their parents or else lie fast lettered in prison. This law many men do carelessly neglect, which the stork alone, among all living creatures, doth keep most precisely. For other creatures do hard, and scarcely know or look upon their parents, if peradventure they need their aid to nourish them; whereas the stork doth mutually nourish them, being stricken in age, and bear them on her shoulders, when for feebleness they cannot fly.” — Bullinger’s Second Decade, Serm. 5, Parker Society’s edit., vol. 1, p. 272. See also Hooper’s Early Writings, Parker Society’s edit., p. 359. “Follow the nature of the cicone, that in her youth nourisheth the old days of her parents.” — Plin., lib. 10 cap. 23, Nat. Hist.

The Fr. concludes the sentence thus: “et ainsi nous sont comme maistresses pour nous apprendre a recognoistre le bien que nous avons receu de ceux qui nous ont mis au monde et elevez;” and so are, as it were, our mistresses to teach us to repay the benefits of those who have brought us into the world and reared us.

(6) This famous sentiment of antiquity is found in the Elegies of Theognis, some 500 years B.C., —

Pa>ntwn me<n mh< fu~nai ejpicqoni>oisin a]riston, Mhd j ejsidei~n aujgav ojxe>ov hjeli>v. Fu>nta d j o[pwv w]kiva pu>lav aji`>daw perh~sai Kai< kei+sqai pollh<n gh~n ejpamhsa>menon. — 425-428.

It is also reported by Plutarch, in his Παραμυθητικὸς προς Απολλώνιον, by whom, as well as by Cicero, it is called the reply of Silenus to Midas, — “Affertur etiam de Sileno fabella quaedam: qui cum a Mida captus esset, hoc ei muneris pro sua missione dedisse scribitur: docuisse regem, non nasci homini longe optimum esse; proximum autem, quamprimum mori.” — Tusc Quaest. 1:48. “Ex quo intelligi licet, non nasci longe optimum esse, nec in hos scopulos incidere vitae; proximum autem, si natus sis, quamprimum mori, et tanquam ex incendio effugere fortunae. Sileni quae fertur fabula, etc.” — Consolatio. Lactantius refers to the latter passage, De falsa sapientia, Section 19. “Hinc nata est inepta illa sententia, etc.”

(7) “Pars justiciae non postrema.” — Lat. “Une partie de la justice, qui nous devons tous garder;” a part of righteousness which we ought all to observe. — Fr.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT VERSUS IRREVERENCE

Exo 20:12

OUR text is a turning point in the table of the Ten Commandments. The commandments treated heretofore in this series of sermons have every one pertained to our obligations Godward; the first urging upon us monotheism; the second warning us against idolatry; the third calling us back from all the vain uses of the proper employment of Gods day. But this fifth commandment, while not forgetting mans obligation to God, does regard his obligation to his brother man; and so, as George Dana Boardman suggests, The fifth commandment is the link joining these two tables looking both Godward and manward. As such, it is the centerpiece of the Decalogue, the keystone of the Sinaitic arch.

We do not forget that Christ Himself regarded this division of duties. When, on one occasion, a certain Scribe asked Him, saying Master which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus said unto him,

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind; this is the first and greatest commandment; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets (Mat 22:37-40).

By this reply it is not difficult to see that Jesus summed up the first, second, third, and fourth commandments by what He termed the first and great commandment, while putting the remaining ones under His second.

And yet we are more and more disposed to feel that the Law is a unit, and that Christ voiced the very truth when He taught that if we break one of the commandments, we have violated the whole ten.

There is little occasion, therefore, for making distinctions between obligations Godward and man-ward, for a man may not discharge the former without also doing the latter, and vice versa.

From this text then we look up toward God and out toward man, for it is God who says, Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee (Exo 20:12).

In this text we have

A RIGHTEOUS COMMANDMENT

Honour thy father and thy mother. It is needless to remark that Americans are in need of the fifth commandment. We have departed so far from the heathenism of ancestral worship that our very national life is tottering on the precipice of parricide; and we have every need that this fifth commandment call us back to that reverence for parents which becomes any people. There is a natural and yet none the less dangerous tendency on the part of children to forget their obligations to father and mother, and for a little time this evening, I want us to think upon some of the obligations to parents which are most patent.

First of all, we are obligated to them for life itself. Who can measure this obligation? There is no one here who does not appreciate life and does not feel that even at the worst, life is the most precious of all possessions.

A writer remarks, Accidentally no doubt the pessimistic influences of this or that age may cause some to depreciate the gift of life and to say that their birth was a calamity; there may be times so wearisome; there may be times when hopes seem so blighted, and lifes purposes so disastrously defeated; when the past is so charged with regrets, or the future so overshadowed by fears that we may wish that we had never been born; but in the long run, with most men the conviction will always prevail that such a discontent is the product of ignoble or unworthy moods.

The noblest sons of earth and her noblest daughters will answer the complaining pessimist in the high speech of Longfellow:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Finds us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums are beating,

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the worlds broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howeer pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God oerhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footsteps on the sands of time;

Footsteps, that, perhaps another,

Sailing oer lifes solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

And, in proportion as one appreciates his life; in proportion as that life unfolds into beauty and experiences pleasures which can never be adequately expressed; in proportion as it rises on the wings of hope, and facing toward another world, feels the unspeakable thrill of the eternal joys, the obligation to the father and mother who gave us being grows until no amount of gold can pay the debt and no gratitude can be too deep.

The parent love has laid us under still larger obligation. There are those who speak lightly of love and who seem to regard it as a mere sentiment which may be encouraged or discouraged at ones pleasure, and for the proffer of which we are put under no obligation. But Gods Apostle had another, a higher and an infinitely better notion of this grace, for, when comparing it with what men had commonly supposed to be the greatest things in the world, he gave it a higher place by saying, And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love,

When God would reconcile the world to Himself, He voices as His reason for that reconciliation, For God so loved the world, and on that ground simply, He expects and demands the gratitude of men. And in all the world there is nothing so like the very love of God as the mothers love and the fathers love, unless indeed they be very unnatural parents. And to receive this in the extended measure in which it is commonly given, to live by it in infancy, and to be its subject in maturer years, is to be under the gravest obligation. The man or woman who forgets the obligation gives occasion to Shakespeares words in King Lear, Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, more hideous when thou showest thee in a child than in a sea monster! And again, How sharper than a serpents teeth it is to have a thankless child! Away! Away!

The true son will write of his mother as Tennyson in The Princess:

Yet was there one through whom I love her, one

Not learned, save in gracious household ways

Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,

No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt

In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise,

Interpreter between the gods and men,

Who looked all native to her place, and yet

On tiptoe seemd to touch upon a sphere

Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce

Swayd to her from their orbits as they moved,

And girdled her with music, Happy he

With such a mother! Faith in womankind

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high

Comes easy to him, and tho he trip and fall

He shall not blind his soul with clay.

Parental sacrifices swell our dues. Sometimes children talk as if they had no obligation to a father who is plain, ignorant, and possibly harsh; none to a mother, because, forsooth, she is not attractive, and does not meet their ideal of what a mother ought to be. But these are not the determining questions. The deep relationship we sustain to our parents can never be destroyed. The fact that we bring our life from them should never be forgotten. The debt of gratitude due on receipt of their love, can never be discharged, while the sacrifices they have made for your sake settles forever the righteousness of the fifth commandment, and plainly discovers your duty and your privilege.

Many a time my old father said to me, My boy, you dont appreciate what your parents have done for you, and almost as often I thought he was trying to manage me by arousing a false sense of obligation. But the time comes when one knows from the experience of paternity the truths his father told him; and it would seem indeed that we might learn the lesson earlier, if only we were watchful for those expressions which represent so much sacrifice.

Dr. Chapman says that he was talking with his friend, E. P. Brown, senior editor of the Rams Horn, in Dennizen Hotel, Indiana, in 1894, and was listening to his experience in getting out of infidelity; how he had been converted under Mr. Moodys preaching in Chicago. On that day he told Dr. Chapman about an experience he had when he was eighteen years of age that brought him for the first time to appreciate his fathers love. The father had seldom expressed any affection for Brown when he was a boy, and in consequence the boy came to doubt whether his father loved him, and ran away from home. But he was taken sick and out of sheer necessity had to return. His father gave him a friendly welcome, but he found his parents very poor and also in ill-health, and soon he discovered that there was not bread for all and only a few crumbs for each, and he came to feel that all he took of this increased the hardship of the members of the house, and so he decided to leave again. As soon as he grew a little stronger, he told his father his purpose, and the old man said, No, my boy, stay a while longer. Times will brighten up. But he was determined, and so the father had to consent; and when the boy was ready to go, the father started with him, intending to go a short distance, and have with him his last talk. After they had gone a half mile or so, the father was too weary to proceed and said he would have to go back; so he took the boy by the hand, and with trembling voice said, I never wanted to be rich before, my boy, as I do today. God knows it almost kills me to see you leave home because your father is so poor. * * I cannot bear to see you go in this way while you are still almost sick. Come back! As long as we have a crust, there is a part of it for you, and while we have a roof over us, there is no need for you to be without a home. But when he saw that my mind was fixed, and nothing he could do would change my decision, he said, oh, how sadly, Good-by, good-by; God bless you! If we never meet in this life again, I hope we will meet in Heaven. Then as he softly and reluctantly let go of my hand, he turned and started to go home, but he only took a step or two and then stopped and spoke my name, and, as he did so, I turned and I saw a tear leave his eye and wind down his cheek. It was the first tear I had ever seen my father shed for me, and coming forward, he pressed a piece of money into my hand, and then turned without another word and walked away. I watched him as far as I could see him with something in my heart that had never been there before, and then went on my way happier than I had ever been in all my life, for now I knew that father loved me. I knew that gift was every cent he had on earth, and I knew what great pain and labor it had cost. It was all he could do for me, and in the gift I saw my fathers heart.

It would seem indeed that most children receive gifts that show the parents heart and are such that the mandate of this text, Honour thy father and thy mother, ought to commend itself.

I am in agreement perfectly with what Dr. Boardman said, when addressing the students in the University of Pennsylvania, I believe, young gentlemen, that when a son is disobedient to his parents, he is guilty of something more than undutifulness; and that when he insults them, he is guilty of something more than insolence; and that when he is unkind to them, he is guilty of something more than cruelty; and that when he wrongs them, he is guilty of something more than injustice. No words can accurately express the conduct that disregards the author of life, that despises the proffer of life, and treats with contempt the sacrifices which come from the inmost heart, and I dont know but Talmage was right when he said, Other sins may be adjourned to the next world for judgment, but the ill treatment of parents will be avenged in this. But I turn from the mandate to consider

THE PRECIOUS PROMISE

That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee (Exo 20:12).

This is a promise of long life. I believe that a proper interpretation of the text means that. History seems so to teach. In Europe, in England, and in America, those sects who are noted for reverence to parents are equally exceptional as a long-lived people. I refer particularly to the Jews and Quakers, and those who, in a similar way, reverence their parents.

A Philadelphian says, Respect for parental authority tends to longevity; filial reverence is itself an admirable hygiene. Recall the story of the Rechabites. Because they had for centuries obeyed the commandment of Jonadab, their ancestor, and kept all his precepts, therefore Jehovah promised, through the mouth of his Prophet, Jeremiah, that the house of Jonadab, their ancestor, the son of Rechab, should stand before him forever. And the promise has been wonderfully fulfilled. As late as the year of our Lord, 1862, Signor Pierotti met a tribe of Rechabites near the southeast end of the Dead Sea, who still observed the precepts and maintained the organization enjoined by their ancestor, Jonadab, in the time of Elijah, the Prophet. What was it that gave to Rome its long-continued tremendous power and majesty? It was the patria protestas, or paternal authority, before which every Roman youth unquestionably bowed; for loyalty is the sire of royalty. Even China herself, although her civilization was long ago arrested and petrified, owes, I doubt not, her preservation through millenniums to the fealty of her children to their ancestral commandments and traditions. But why cross the ocean for examples? Behold the Quakers of our own Pennsylvania; the unwrinkled brows of their octogenarians placidly testify that the honoring of father and mother is a healthful, life-promoting habit. I know the truth of this statement touching these Pennsylvanians. I had a dear old Quaker great-uncle who pressed hard his centenary. The wife of his bosom did not leave him until in her nineties, and those old people with hundreds of others of their faith, were testimonies to the fact that a strict keeping of this fifth commandment means long life.

It also means goodly possessions.

That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee (Exo 20:12).

What more frugal people, what more financially successful people than these same Quakers? They grow rich where other people have a bare existence, not simply because they revere their parents, but because such reverence for old age is always associated with other phases of conduct that are both comely and competent.

I have seldom known a young man who honored his father and his mother, and was more than differential, was affectionate, but I have found in him also the very traits of success. When George Washington was a youth, he made ready to go to sea as a midshipman. His trunk had been taken on board a vessel, and he was bidding his mother farewell. But wheft he saw her great sorrow at giving him up, he called a servant, and said, Go and bring my trunk back. His mother learning this decision said, George, God has promised to bless the children that honor their parents, and I believe He will bless you.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was an obedient son. In his youth, on account of poverty, he often worked all night, running a ferry-boat by day between New York and Brooklyn. He accepted a government contract to carry provisions to the military stations near the metropolis and filled it at night, and Sweat Marden says, The boy who gave his parents all his day earnings, and half of what he got at night, was so prospered at the age of 35, that he was worth $30,000, and when he died, he left his thirteen children one of the largest fortunes in America.

But one thing more before I finish. This commandment can be

KEPT ONLY IN CHRIST

The New Testament is our authority for such teaching. Paul was perfectly clear upon this point.

He insisted that parents should be such in Christ Jesus. He wrote, Ye fathers provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph 6:4).

The question of discipline is one of the most difficult the parents of the present day have to deal with. On the one side we are confronted with Solomons advice not to spare the rod; on the other, we are charged by Kindergarten ethics not to use it; and one wonders whether the wisdom of Solomon has been surpassed and hesitates to lay on, as our fathers used to do when there was occasion.

We are told to nurture the children in the chastening and admonition of the Lord, and we believe if one will not lay too much stress upon the chastening, nor yet overestimate the admonition, the best results will be achieved, namely, those of playing the part of the parent in Christ.

It has never seemed to me in the least likely that children go to the bad because the rod has been used, or because it has not, but for other reasons instead. If I was asked today what the great deficiency of parents is, I should answer, Their lack of exalted views of life.

Too many live upon a low level and start their children upon a similar plane. Sensuality has its refined phases, I grant you, but even with them, is none the less deserving its old name. And when parents put before the child the spirit of greed, the spirit of worldliness, the example of lust, the coarse life, it is hardly to be expected that the children will be models of moral excellence, of mental acumen, and of spiritual attainment.

I have read somewhere of a woman, who, sitting by her window on one spring day, saw a bird building her nest, but she was putting together the sticks and straws on the branches of a little bush that hung near to the ground. Ah, my tiny friend, said the lady, you are building too low, and with that she went out and tore it down. But the birds heart was set upon the situation, and so she patiently put piece to piece until she had wrought her nest again, and the woman had not the heart to tear it down a second time. After a season the nest was filled with fledglings. But one day the woman heard a cry from the mother bird, and going to the window, she saw a serpent had found out the home and was devouring the young ones one after another. And I want to tell you who are fathers and mothers that I believe more homes are broken up today for this same reason than for all other causes combined. Parents build too low. They themselves go with the godless. They have been over-ambitious to push their sons and daughters into what they deemed the first circles, irrespective of the fact that these same circles have often forgotten God; and the result is an eventual victory for Satan, that old serpent who delights to destroy the young. Oh, for fathers and mothers in Christ Jesus!

Children also must be such in the Lord. That is what Paul says, Children obey your parents in the Lord. The apostle did not deem it possible to be obedient by any other!

Strive as we may to be good, our efforts will be in vain until we have seen the Lord, until we can say with the Apostle, I can do all things.

A few days since I went to see a mother regarding a son who had confessed Christ in our meetings, and who desired to join our church. Her charge against him was disobedience, but she admitted that lately he had been more ready to obey her words. In that fact I thought I saw some evidence at least that lately he had received the Lord.

I wish I could tonight properly impress upon all the young people here the necessity of accepting Jesus Christ, that you may obey this fifth commandment. For, the same power that would bring you victory at the point of reverence and obedience to earthly father and mother, can also give you success in every time, and under every circumstance of temptation. I wish I could properly impress you also with the dangers of disobedience to parents.

Near the top of one of the loftiest summits of the Rocky Mountains, 10,000 feet above the level of the ocean, there rises two fountains: one of them goes off to the North and, passing through the mouth of the Columbia, pours into the bosom of the great Pacific; the other takes its course in the opposite direction and never rests until through the channel of the father of waters, it has reached the Gulf of Mexico. These two fountains start from almost one point, but when the end is reached for them, a continent is between.

And I want to tell you that of the two young men, or if you please, young women, who are walking together today, one of them disobedient to parents, the other affectionately obedient to elders, the time is almost sure to come when not a continent, but a gulf will stretch between themthat great, impassable gulf which Christ described in the parable of Dives and Lazarus.

But after all, true obedience means first allegiance to the Heavenly Father.

It is not a fact that the child must always obey, in letter, the word of father and mother. So long as that father or mother commands what is right, they should have a ready and hearty response. But even disobedience to them may be the best obedience, and in fact, the only true obedience, if the act be one of allegiance to God who is the great Father, and whose right to command is over all.

To illustrate: Every now and then I come upon some one convicted of sin, some one who is desirous of confessing Christ as Saviour, but some one who is opposed by parents, either because they are not Christians themselves, or else are members of another denomination than that to which their children are led by an understanding of the Word. And the question is often asked, What shall we do? The Bible commands us to be obedient to our parents, but Jesus Christ is calling us to Himself.

I am grateful that Christ, who was Himself obedient unto His mother, and yet who, on one occasion, told her that He must be about His Fathers business, has answered this question: He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that taketh not his cross and followeth after Me is not worthy of Me. When there arises a question between father and God, remember, that after all, there is but one Father, and that Christ has said, Call no man your father upon the earth, because one is your Father, even your Father which is in Heaven, and your first, last, and largest allegiance is to Him.

A year or two ago, our Baptist Young Peoples Union published a story of a young girl who was the daughter of a wealthy, worldly house, but, who, in passing a mission one evening, was attracted by the singing. Going in, she heard the Gospel. The Holy Spirit convicted her of her need and she sought salvation. When the parents learned of it, they were greatly disappointed, and decided to try to win her from the association of this common mission crowd. One evening, they invited to the home a festive company, hoping by card table, dance, and winecup to dissipate her religious impressions.

During the evening, her father called her to the piano and requested her to play. She knew what he expected and responded in confusion and uncertainty of mind. On the one side was the fathers request, attended as she perfectly understood, by his desire for the lightest and newest things of the opera; on the other, her longing to sing the praises of her Lord. Nervously she ran her fingers over the keys, debating a while which she should do, and then she touched the chord and put her soul into the playing and singing of Jesus, I my cross have taken.

When it was finished, the father was under conviction for sin, and the house of gayety became the house of God.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

CRITICAL NOTES.

Exo. 20:12. Upon the land.] More exactly: upon the ground or soil (adhamah, not eretz); a term happily used of a people destined to become a nation of agriculturists. Patriotism clings fondly to the soil on which a peoples fathers have trod.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Exo. 20:12

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

I. Who are we to honour? Thy father and thy mother. They have given birth to their children. They have educated them. They have provided for their wants in days of infancy and weakness. They love them as no one else can. They watch them with intense interest, in the opening of their minds to truth, and in their progress in social and commercial life. They are over them in the Lord; and children must give honour not merely in the social and domestic life, but in the moral aspects of the relationship.

II. How are we to honour them? Not by mere verbal expressions of respect; but by true reverence, by constant affection, by untiring obedience, and by every effort calculated to enhance their welfare and delight. Speak well of your parents. Take care of them in old age. Never cause them pain by evil doing. Always commend them to God.

III. Why are we to honour them? That thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. It is well to observe that this is the only one of the commandments which has a distinct promise connected with it. Hence the apostle says, Children, obey your parents, which is the first commandment with promise (Eph. 6:12). Children, obey your parents, that it may be well with you. We may contrast this with another passage: Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. Children must honour their parents. Because God has commanded it, because blessing will be attached to it, because the high relationship demands it, because self-respect prompts it, and because in the future they will need a like regard.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Exo. 20:12. Some young people may say that their parents are not lovable, and that therefore they cannot love them; not wise, and that therefore they cannot respect them; that they are unreasonable, capricious, and selfish; that they have vices of temper and speech, and, perhaps, vices of a still grosser kind; and that therefore it is simply impossible to honour them. I think that there are not a few children in our days who are disposed to take this ground, and to maintain it as a principle. Our parents have a right to just that measure of respect and affection from us, which they can claim on the ground of their intelligence and worth, no more and no less. At first sight this looks reasonable enough. There is very much to be said for that view of matters. How can I love any one who has very little in her to love, simply because she happens to be my mother? How can I respect any one in whom there is nothing to respect, simply because he happens to be my father? The movements of the heart and the decisions of the judgment are and must be altogether independent of mere relationship, and are determined by the character and power of the people with whom we have to do. That looks very philosophical, no doubt. But, my philosophic young friend, how would it have fared with you if your father and mother had had the same ideas about your claims on them? You want your parents to stand on the same ground as other men and women, and to be loved and respected according to their personal merits, just as if they had no natural relationship to you; what would have happened if they had been equally philosophical and impartial, and if they had given you only as much affection and care as you seemed to deserve, or as you claimed on the ground of your helplessness; if, in short, they had justified themselves in ignoring any special obligation to love you and to care for you, beyond the obligation which would have rested on them to love and care for any child that happened to come into their hands?R. W. Dale.

The notices of the childhood and youth of Jesus Christ in the Word of God are very few. But let us look now at His obedience to His earthly parents. He honoured them, first by being subject to them; He was obedient; He was full of grace and truth; He grew in wisdom daily. His understanding and His answers astonished all that heard them, even the most learned doctors of the day; and yet this Son went down to Nazareth with His parents, and was subject to them. What a lesson for all is this! He who was higher than the kings of the earth was subject to His parents; He honoured His father; He obeyed them. And nothing can excuse a child from this duty; it belongs to the relation, and what God has joined no man may put asunder. We find the greatest characters in the Word of God honouring their parents, Joseph, though governor of Egypt, bowed himself with his face to the earth before his father Jacob; and Solomon, the most magnificent of all earthly kings, honoured his mother with the same reverence, rising up to meet her and bowing himself unto her, and giving her the place of honour at his right hand; and behold a greater than Solomon is here, who was subject unto His parentsnot merely courteous and reverential, as the examples I have mentioned may have been, but subject unto them, obedient to them. Nor should I conceive, dear friends that age in the least interferes with this duty on the part of children, but that obedience is due from the child to the parent as long as the relationship exists. There may be a variety of reasons why the parent should have no occasion to exercise his authority; but should occasion arise, I conceive that the child, however advanced in years, is in no sense exempt from obedience; because we shall see, as we go on, that the parent is certainly not exempt from the exercise of authority.J. W. Reeve, M.A.

ILLUSTRATIONS

BY
THE REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON

Parental Honour! Exo. 20:12. When, after the delivery of the law on Mount Sinai, the commandments were graven on two tables of stone, this was placed first upon the second. It is the first commandment with promise. A little boy was once asked in school to explain the fifth commandment. Instead of trying to do so, he covered his face with his hands to hide his blushes, and said, Yesterday I showed a strange gentleman over the mountain, and the sharp stones cut my feet. When the gentleman saw that they were bleeding, he gave me some money to buy shoes. I gave it to mother, for she had no shoes either, and! thought that I could very well go barefoot to honour my mother.

Thou shalt honour thy mother, whose love unto thee
The greatest of Gods earthly blessings shall be.

Filial Faithfulness! Exo. 20:12. George Washington, when quite young, was about to go to sea as a midshipman. Everything was in readiness. His trunk had been taken on board the boat, and he went to bid his mother farewell. Seeing her distress, he turned to the servant, saying: Go and tell them to fetch my trunk back, for I will not go away to break my mothers heart. His mother. struck with his decision, and with mingled tears of joy and sorrow, assured him that God would bless him for thus honouring his mother. And the assurance was realised. The name of General Washington is a world-wide word of valiancy, integrity, and piety. We say that now we see through a glass darkly. Suppose, when all is clear in the eternal world, we discover that had Washington gone to sea he would have met with an untimelyor unhonoureddeath, whereas by honouring his mother his days were long in the land of his birth.

How sweet, when we hear the commandment to say,
Lord, if THOU wilt help me, Ill strive to obey;
Ill bend down the force of my own stubborn will,
And bid every passionate feeling be still.

Filial Folly! Exo. 20:12. In Deu. 27:16 we read these solemn words: Cursed be he that setteth light by father or mother. In Pro. 30:17, God speaks in this awful way: The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out. In Western Pennsylvania dwelt an Irishman, who had been wealthy at one time. He had an only son, whose wild and wicked ways reduced the father to poverty. With shattered health and fading sightpoor, blind, friendless, and forsakenthe old man found shelter in the Franklin almshouses. One day the wicked and ungrateful son was passing through the city, and was urged to visit his kind father, whom he had ruined. He refused to do so, and proceeded on his journey. A severe storm overtook him, and he caught a severe cold. It fastened on his eyes, from which all sight soon entirely fled. Poverty came; and on the very day that the dead corpse of the father was borne out, his living corpse was borne into the Franklin almshouse. He was put into the same roomdied in the same bedand was borne forth to the same grave.

Thou shalt honour thy father, the guide of thy youth,
And yield him the homage of love and of truth.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

(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 (Eph. 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. Paul (Eph. 6:3), which is purely personal and not ethnic; and the exegesis of the Son of Sirach (Wis. 3:6), which is similar. It is also worthy of note that an Egyptian sage, who wrote long before Moses, declared it as the result of his experience that obedient sons did attain to a good old age in Egypt, and laid down the principle broadly, that the son who attends to the words of his father will grow old in consequence (Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne, vol. i., p. 342).

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT, Exo 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 . “For a considerable time,” observes Clarke, “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 . ” The death penalty was enjoined for him who smote or reviled his parents . Exo 21:15; Exo 21:17. The proverb (in Pro 30:17) shows how execrable the dishonouring of parents was considered: “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it . ” See also the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, Exo 3:1-16. The filial relation best represents the true relationship of man to God as his author and preserver, and, accordingly, he who disrespects its sacredness exhibits one of the most notable marks of impiety. But loyalty and devotion to parents tend to cultivate reverence for God, and for rulers, ministers, and teachers, who hold positions of responsibility and are set to guard the public weal. It is worthy of note that in Lev 19:3, this law and that of the sabbath are united together thus: “Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, and keep my Sabbaths . ” These two are the only commandments of the decalogue which are expressed in positive form.

That thy days may be long The apostle calls this “the first commandment with promise.” Eph 6:2. It is the only one in the decalogue which has a specific promise attached to it .

The land which the Lord thy God giveth thee is here to be understood first of the promised land of Israel, the land of Canaan . Comp . Deu 4:26; Deu 4:40; Deu 30:18; Deu 32:47. But in the wider scope which this commandment has, as being grounded in the nature of the family, and so alike binding upon all men, it is to be understood of the land or country of any and every individual. “Filial respect,” says Cook, in The Speaker’s Commentary, “is the ground of national permanence. When the Jews were about to be cast out of their land, the rebuke of the prophet was that they had not walked in the old paths, and had not respected the voice of their fathers as the sons of Jonadab had done. Jer 6:16; Jer 35:18-19. And when in later times the land had been restored to them, and they were about to be cast out of it a second time, the great sin of which they were convicted was that they had set aside this fifth commandment for the sake of their own traditions . Mat 15:4-6; Mar 7:10-11. Every other nation that has a history bears witness to the same truth . Rome owed her strength, as well as the permanence of her influence after she had politically perished, to her steady maintenance of the patria potestas . (Maine, Ancient Law .) China has mainly owed her long duration to the simple way in which she has uniformly acknowledged the authority of her fathers . ”

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Last Six Commandments Jesus teaches that the last six commandments deal with our relationship with our fellow man:

Mar 12:30-32, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

They teach us how to serve the Lord in our relationships with our family and society.

5th Commandment (Exo 20:12) – Honour father and mother.

6th Commandment (Exo 20:13) – Do not murder.

7th Commandment (Exo 20:14) – Do not commit adultery.

8th Commandment (Exo 20:15) – Do not steal.

9th Commandment (Exo 20:16) – Do not bear false witness.

10th Commandment (Exo 20:17) – Do not covet.

Note New Testament references to these last six commandments:

Mat 5:1 to Mat 7:29 – The Sermon on the Mount

Mat 19:18-19, “He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Mar 10:19, “Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.”

Luk 18:20, “Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.”

Rom 13:9-10, “For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Exo 20:12  Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Exo 20:12 Word Study on “Honour” Strong says the Hebrew word “honour” “kabad” ( ) (H3513) literally means, “to be heavy, be insensible, be dull,” and used figuratively it means, “to honour, to glorify.”

Exo 20:12 Comments – The Fifth Commandment The fifth commandment teaches us to honour our parents.

The Old Testament Perspective – Honouring our parents brings long life and a life where things go well, that is, a life of blessings and not curses.

Deu 5:16, “Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”

The Law warned the Israelites against striking one’s parents or curse them.

Exo 21:15, “And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.”

Exo 21:17, “And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.”

Lev 20:9, “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”

Deu 27:16, “Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.”

The Law commanded children to fear their parents.

Lev 19:3, “Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.”

The Law commanded children to respect elders.

Lev 19:32, “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD.”

Illustration: In 1Ki 2:19 King Solomon bows to his mother Bathsheba.

1Ki 2:19, “Bathsheba therefore went unto king Solomon, to speak unto him for Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right hand.”

The Law judged those children who were stubborn and rebellious.

Deu 21:18-20, “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto 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.”

Other verses in the Old Testament:

Pro 1:8-9, “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.

Pro 15:5, “A fool despiseth his father’s instruction: but he that regardeth reproof is prudent.”

Pro 20:20, “Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.”

Pro 23:22-25

Pro 28:24, “Whoso robbeth his father or his mother, and saith, It is no transgression; the same is the companion of a destroyer.”

Pro 30:11, “There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother.”

Pro 30:17, “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.”

The New Testament Perspective Note the New Testament perspective of honouring our parents.

Mat 15:4, “For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.”

Mar 7:9-16

Mar 7:10, “For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:”

Luk 18:20, “Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.”

Rom 1:30, “Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,”

Eph 6:1-3

Eph 6:2-3, “Honour 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.”

Col 3:20, “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.”

1Ti 5:4, “But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God.”

2Ti 3:1-2, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,”

Exo 20:13  Thou shalt not kill.

Exo 20:13 Word Study on “kill” Strong says the Hebrew word ( ) (H7523) is a primitive root that means, “to dash in pieces, i.e. kill (a human being), especially to murder.”

Exo 20:13 Comments – The Sixth Commandment Exo 20:13 records the sixth commandment, which teaches us not to kill. Murder here is defined as the intentional, pre-meditated act of taking another human life. It also includes the thoughts of a man’s heart. This commandment is not talking about accidental killings, wartime killings, or capital punishment. These other three types of killing are clearly dealt with in the Mosaic Law. One of the clearest definitions of murder is found in Num 35:16-21 and Deu 19:11-13.

Jesus Himself defined murder as an evil attitude of the heart, an attitude that leads from anger to premeditated murder. This definition excludes the other types of killings. Note:

Mat 5:21-22, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”

This commandment is demonstrating the value of human life in the eyes of God.

We know that God has ordained governments to punish evildoers. One of these types of punishment is to kill the evildoer. We see this in the Scriptures. In Rom 13:4, the sword represents this type of judgment upon the evildoers.

Rom 13:4, “For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”

The Old Testament Perspective – The Law made provision for acts of murder in Num 35:9-34. Wrath is the source of anger.

Illustrations of wrath:

1. Genesis 32-33 – Jacob meets Esau.

2. 1 Samuel 25 – Abigail intercedes to David for Nabal.

3. Moses’ problem with anger:

He left Pharaoh’s presence in great anger before the ten plagues (Exo 11:8)

He slew an Egyptian

He broke the stone tablets

He struck the rock twice

Wrath in the tongue:

Pro 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”

Jas 1:19-21, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.”

A man must rule his own spirit.

Pro 25:28, “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.”

Pro 14:17, “He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly: and a man of wicked devices is hated.”

Pro 16:32, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”

Ecc 7:9, “Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”

Have no fellowship with an angry person.

Pro 22:24, “Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go:”

Why?

Pro 29:22, “An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression.”

Wrath is the source of murder:

Pro 27:4, “Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?”

Wrath is a work of the flesh:

Rom 12:19, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

Gal 5:20, “Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,”

Eph 4:31, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:”

Just as justice was to be carried out under the Old Testament law, so also under the New Testament covenant. God has made a way to bring about justice.

The New Testament Perspective

Mat 5:21-26, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.”

Mat 18:15-20 Illustration: 1Co 5:4-6, 2Co 2:5-8

Mat 16:19, “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Luk 6:28-29, “Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.”

Rom 12:19-21, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Pro 25:21-22, “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee.”

Exo 20:14  Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Exo 20:14 Word Study on “adultery” Strong says the Hebrew word for “adultery” ( ) (H5003) means, “to commit adultery.” He said this word is used figuratively to means, “to apostatize.”

Exo 20:14 Comments – The Seventh Commandment Exo 20:14 records the seventh commandment. It tells us not to commit adultery. Adultery here can mean any form of unfaithfulness. While aimed at keeping the marriage sacred, it also includes the concept of a pure relationship between single people, toward God, and even the thoughts of a man’s heart.

Mat 5:27-28, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Jas 4:4, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”

The Old Testament Perspective

The adulterer loves darkness and hides his sin.

Job 24:15, “The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face.”

Pro 6:20-35

The adulteress denies her sin.

Pro 30:20, “Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.”

Jer 3:6-11

Jer 5:7, “How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots’ houses.”

Jer 7:8-15

The New Testament Perspective

Mat 5:27-30

Jas 2:11, “For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.”

Jas 4:4-10

Exo 20:15  Thou shalt not steal.

Exo 20:15 Comments – The Eighth Commandment Exo 20:15 gives us the eighth commandment, which tells us not to steal.

Exo 20:16  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Exo 20:16 Comments – The Ninth Commandment Exo 20:16 gives us the ninth commandment, which tells us not to bear false witness against our neighbour.

The Old Testament Perspective

Lev 19:11, “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.”

Lev 19:16, “Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.”

Deu 19:15-21

Psa 15:3, “He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.”

Psa 101:5, “Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer.”

Psa 101:7, “He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight.”

The New Testament Perspective

Evil speaking

Eph 4:31, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking , be put away from you, with all malice:”

Liars

1Ti 1:10, “For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;”

False accusers

2Ti 3:3, “Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,”

Do not speak evil of the brethren

Jas 4:11, “Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.”

Illustrations

1. Jezebeel’s false witness for Naboth – 1Ki 21:1-29 (this story also illustrates covetousness).

1Ki 21:13, “And there came in two men, children of Belial, and sat before him: and the men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him with stones, that he died.”

2. Against Jesus.

Mat 26:59, “Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death;”

3. Against Stephen.

Act 6:11, “Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God.”

Exo 20:17  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

Exo 20:17 Comments – The Tenth Commandment Exo 20:17 records the tenth commandment, which tells us not to covet anything that belongs to our neighbour. To covet means to earnestly desire something. It is when a man makes decisions based on earthly, material gain or not based on God’s Word.

Eph 5:5, “For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”

Col 3:5, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:”

1Ti 6:10-11, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.”

Note a New Testament reference to Exo 20:17:

Rom 7:7, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet .”

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

The Commandments Concerning the Love of One’s Neighbor

v. 12. Honor thy father and thy mother, they are to be given the reverence due to them as the representatives of God, with heart, mouth, and hand, in thought, word, and deed. In the home, in the family, is the foundation of all social life, all governments really being dependent upon the relation of parents and children, the existence and the welfare of the nations depending upon the moral stability given them by the home in its proper form, as the promise indicates; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord, thy God, giveth thee. It is the first commandment with promise, as St. Paul writes Eph 6:2-3, where he changes the text to apply to all men, and not only to the Jewish nation.

v. 13. Thou shalt not kill, the duty of preserving the life which God has given to man being enjoined here in all its branches and manifestations.

v. 14. Thou shalt not commit adultery, the word here used including not only the unfaithfulness of men and women within holy marriage, but every form of impurity directed against the holiness of God’s institution of wedlock. Not only is every thought, word, and deed that is sanctioned and commanded within the confines of marriage forbidden outside of these bounds, but also every form of obscenity and every kind of familiarity which is connected with the sexual development of man.

v. 15. Thou shalt not steal, the Lord here protecting the property of one’s neighbor, as the condition of the dignity and peacefulness of life, not only against robbery and theft, but also against unfaithfulness, neglect, and waste.

v. 16. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, the object being to protect truth, not only in all public, civil relations, but also in the home, the malice of evil tongues being well known.

v. 17. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s. Here the thoughts of the entire second table are once more summarized with reference to the source of sin; for it is out of the heart that the evil thoughts proceed which are afterward realized in various actual sins, Mat 15:19. So the admirable and fitting order of the commandments, as Luther cans it, is brought to an end and the circle of injunctions completed; for it is only by the sanctification of the heart according to the Tenth Commandment that the true worship of God according to the First Commandment can be secured. It should be noted here that both the division of the Decalogue as such and the distinction between the Ninth and the Tenth Commandment are matters of no material consequence.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Exo 20:12. Honour thy father and thy mother This is the first commandment of the second table, and therefore called by St. Paul the first with promise, Eph 6:2. A promise, which, in the letter and its primary sense, manifestly refers to the land of Canaan, which the Lord was about to give the Hebrews; and which promise was so far peculiar to them, since to them, as a nation, the promise seems particularly given. See note on Exo 20:5. Visiting the iniquity, &c. But St. Paul gives it a more extensive sense, applying it to long life upon the earth; following the words of Deu 5:16 that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. The word rendered honour, kabed, signifies “to give all kind of weight and importance; to esteem and treat as weighty and honourable; as worthy of all duty and respect.” All nations and people have agreed, with just reason, to hold filial duty in the highest degree of veneration.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

This is the fifth commandment: and the first of the second table of the law concerning our duty to our neighbour. The apostle calls this the first commandment with promise. Eph 6:2 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Exo 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, ; 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. Jdg 9:56 Besides the punishment they have in their posterity, to whom they have been peremptores potius quam parentes. a 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. See Trapp (for summary of Law) on “ Exo 20:17 “

a Bernard.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Exodus

THE DECALOGUE: II.-MAN AND MAN

Exo 20:12 – – Exo 20:21 .

I. The broad distinction between the two halves of the Decalogue is that the former deals with man’s relations to God, and the latter with His relations to men. This double division is recognised in the New Testament summary of ‘all the law,’ as found in two commandments, and is probably implied in the two tables on which it was inscribed. Commentators have been much exercised, however, about how to divide the commandments between these two parts. The fifth, which is the first in this division, belongs in substance to the second half, but its form connects it with the first table. It is like the preceding ones in having a reason appended, and in naming ‘the Lord thy God’; while the following are all bare, curt prohibitions. The fact seems to be that it is a transition commandment, and meant to cast special sacredness round the parental relationship, by paralleling it, in some sense, with that to God, of which it is a reflection. Other duties to other men stand on a different level from duties to parents. ‘Honour,’ which is to be theirs, is not remote from the reverence due to God. They are, as it were, His shadows to the child. The fatherhood of God is dimly revealed in that parting off the commandment from the second table, and assimilating it in form to the laws of the first.

II. The connection of the two halves of the Decalogue teaches some important truth. Josephus said a wise thing when he remarked that, ‘whereas other legislators had made religion a department of virtue, Moses made virtue a department of religion.’ No theory of morals is built upon the deepest foundation which does not recognise the final ground of the obligation of duty in the voice of God. Duty is debitum -debt. Who is the creditor? Myself? An impersonal law? Society? No, God. The practice of morality depends, like its theory, on religion. In the long-run, and on the wide scale, nations and periods which have lost the latter will not long keep the former in any vigour or purity. He who begins by erasing the first commandment will sooner or later make a clean sweep of all the ten. And, on the other hand, wherever there is true worship of the one God, there all fair charities between man and man will flourish and fruit. The two tables are one law. Duties to God come first, and those to man, who is made in the image of God, flow from these.

III. The order of these human duties is significant. We have, next after the law of parental reverence, three commandments, which, in a descending series of importance, forbid crimes against life, marriage, and property. Then the law passes from deeds to the more subtle, and, as men think, less grave, offences of the tongue. Next it crosses the boundary which divides human from divine law, and crimes from sins, to take cognisance of unspoken and unacted desires. So the order of progress in the first table is exactly the reverse of that in the second. There we begin with inward devotion, and travel outwards by deed and word to the sabbatical institution; here we begin with overt acts, and travel inwards, through words, to the hidden desire. The end touches the beginning. For that which we ‘covet’ is our God; and the first commandment is only obeyed when our hearts hunger after Him, and not after earth. The sequence here corresponds to the order of progress in our knowledge and practice of our human duties. The first thing that the rudest state of society has to do is to establish some kind of security for life and property and woman’s honour. The worst men know that much as their duty, however foul may be their lips, and hot their passions. Then the recognition of the sanctity of the great gift of speech, and the supreme obligations of veracity, grow upon men as they get above the earlier stage. Most children pass through a phase when they tell lies as pastime, and most rude societies and half-moralised men have a similar epoch. Last of all, when actions have been bridled and the tongue taught the law of truth, comes the full recognition that the work is not done till the silent longing of a hungry heart is stilled, and that unselfish love of our neighbour is only perfect when we can rejoice in his good and wish none of it for ourselves. The second table is a chart of moral progress.

IV. The scope of these laws has often been violently stretched so as to include all human duty; but without tugging at them so as to make them cover everything, we may note briefly how far they extend. We are scarcely warranted in taking any of them but the last, as going deeper than overt acts, for, though our Lord has taught in the Sermon on the Mount that hatred is murder, and impure desire adultery, that is His deepening of the commandment. But it is quite fair to bring out the positive precept which, in each case, underlies the stern, short prohibition.

The fifth commandment shares with the fourth the distinction of being a positive command. It enjoins ‘honour,’ not ‘love,’ partly because, in olden times, the father was a prince in his house in a sense that has long since ceased to be true, partly because there was less need to enjoin the affection which is in some degree instinctive, than the submission and respect which the children are tempted to withhold, partly in order to suggest the analogy with reverence to God. A strange change has passed over the relations of parents and children, even within a generation. There is more, perhaps, of frank familiar intercourse, which, no doubt, is an improvement on the old style. But there is a great deal less of what the commandment enjoins. City life, education, the general impairing of the idea of authority, which we see everywhere, have told upon many families; and many a father who, by indulgence or by too much engrossment in business, lets the children twitch the reins out of his hands, might lament, as his grown-up children spurn control, ‘If then I be a father, where is mine honour?’ There is no one of the commandments which it is more needful to preach in England than this.

The promise attached to it has another side of threatening. It is a plain fact that when the paternal relation is corrupted, a powerful solvent has been introduced which rapidly tends to disintegrate society. The most ancient empire in the world today, China, has, amid many vices and follies, been preserved mainly by the profound reverence to ancestors which is largely its real working religion. The most vigorous power in the old world, Rome, owed its iron might not only to its early simplicity of life and its iron tenacity, but to the strength of paternal authority and the willingness of filial obedience. No more serious damage can be inflicted on society or on individuals than the weakening of the honour paid to fathers and mothers.

‘Thou shalt not kill’ forbids not only the act of murder, but all that endangers life. It enjoins all care, diligence, and effort to preserve it. A man who looks on while another drowns, or who sends a ship out half manned and overloaded, breaks it as really as a red-handed murderer. But the commandment was not intended to touch the questions of capital punishment or of war. These were allowed under the Jewish code, and cannot therefore be supposed to be prohibited here. How far either is consistent with the deepest meaning of the law, as expanded and reconsecrated in Christianity, is another question. Their defenders have to execute some startling feats of gymnastics to harmonise either with the New Testament.

‘Curus kind o’ Christian dooty,

This ‘ere cuttin’ folks’s throats.’

The ground of the commandment is not given, seeing that conscience is expected to admit its force as soon as stated. But its place at the head of the second table brings it into connection with the first commandment, and suggests that man’s life is sacred because he is the image of God. As Christians, we are bound to interpret it on the lines which Christ has laid down; according to which, hatred is murder, and love is the fulfilling of this as of all other laws. So Luther’s comprehensive summing up of the duties enjoined may be accepted: ‘Patience, gentleness, kindliness, peaceableness, pity, and, of all things, a sweet, friendly heart, without any hate, anger, bitterness, toward any, even enemies.’

In like manner, the seventh commandment sanctifies wedded life, and is the first step in that true reverence of woman which marked the Jewish people through all their history, and was in such contrast to her position in all other ancient societies. Purity in all the relations of the sexes, the control of passion, the reverence for marriage, are subjects difficult to speak of in public. But modern society sorely needs some plain speaking on these subjects-abundance of bread and idleness, facilities for divorce, the filth which newspapers lay down on every breakfast-table, the insidious sensuality of much fiction and art, the licence of the stage. The opportunities for secret profligacy in great cities conspire to loosen the bonds of morality. I would venture to ask public teachers seriously to consider their duty in this matter, and to seek for opportunities wisely to warn budding youth of the pitfalls in its path.

What is ‘stealing’? As Luther says, ‘It is the smallest part of the thieves that are hung. If we are to hang them all, where shall we get rope enough? We must make all our belts and straps into halters.’

Theft is the taking or keeping what is not ‘mine.’ But what do we mean by ‘mine’? Communists tell us that ‘property is theft.’ But that is the exaggeration of the scriptural teaching that all property is trust property, that possessions are ‘mine’ on conditions and for purposes, that I cannot ‘do what I will with mine own,’ but am a steward, set to dispense it to those who want. The Christian doctrine of stewardship extends this commandment over much ground which we seldom think of as affected by it. All sharp practice in business, the shopkeeper’s false weights and the merchant’s equivalents of these, adulterations, pirating trademarks, imitating a rival’s goods, infringing patents, and the like, however disguised by fine names, are neither more nor less than stealing. Many a prosperous gentleman says solemnly every Sunday of his life, ‘Incline our hearts to keep this law,’ who would have to live in a much more modest fashion if his prayer were, by any unfortunate accident, answered.

False witness is not only given in court. The sins of the tongue against the law of love are more subtle and common than those of act. ‘Come, let us enjoy ourselves, and abuse our neighbours,’ is the real meaning of many an invitation to social intercourse. If some fairy could treat our newspapers as the Russian censors do, and erase all the lies about the opposite side, which they report and coin, how many blank columns there would be! If all the words of ill-natured calumny, of uncharitable construction of their friends which people speak, could be made inaudible, what stretches of silence would open out in much animated talk! ‘A man that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow.’

But deed and word will not be right unless the heart be right; and the heart will be wrong unless it be purged of the bitter black drop of covetousness. The desire to make my neighbour’s goods mine is the parent of all breaches of neighbourly duty, even as its converse ‘love’ is the fulfilling of it all; for such desire implies that I am ruled by selfishness, and that I would willingly deprive another of goods, for my own gratification. Such a temper, like a wild boar among vineyards, will trample down all the rich clusters in order to slake its own thirst. Find a man who yields to his desires after his neighbour’s goods, and you find a man who will break all commandments like a hornet in a spider’s web. Be he a Napoleon, and glorified as a conqueror and hero, or be he some poor thief in a jail, he has let his covetousness get the upper hand, and so all wrong-doing is possible. Nor is it only the second table which covetousness dashes to fragments. It serves the first in the same fashion; for, as St. Paul puts it, the covetous man ‘is an idolater,’ and is as incapable of loving God as of loving his neighbour. This final commandment, overleaping the boundary between conduct and character, and carrying the light of duty into the dark places of the heart, where deeds are fashioned, sets the whole flock of bats and twilight-loving creatures in agitation. It does what is the main work of the law, in compelling us to search our hearts, and in convincing of sin. It is the converse of the thought that all the law is contained in love; for it closes the list of sins with one which begets them all, and points us away from actions and words which are its children to selfish desire as in itself the transgression of all the law, whether it be that which prescribes our relations to God or that which enjoins our duties to man.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

Honour. This completes the first five, and ends with “promise “(Eph 6:2). These five, that relate to piety, are thus separated from the five that relate to probity. The first and fifth begin and end the five with honour to God, and to our parents whom He honours. They have nothing to do with our “neighbours”.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Honour: Exo 21:15, Exo 21:17, Lev 19:3, Lev 19:32, 1Ki 2:19, 2Ki 2:12, Pro 1:8, Pro 1:9, Pro 15:5, Pro 20:20, Pro 23:22-25, Pro 28:24, Pro 30:11, Pro 30:17, Mal 1:6, Mat 15:4-6, Luk 18:20, Eph 5:21, Eph 6:1-3, Col 3:20

that thy: Deu 4:26, Deu 4:40, Deu 25:15, Deu 32:47, Pro 3:16

Reciprocal: Gen 9:23 – General Gen 28:7 – General Gen 31:35 – my lord Gen 43:5 – will not Gen 43:8 – lad with me Gen 47:12 – his father Gen 48:12 – he bowed himself Gen 50:12 – General Num 12:15 – and the Deu 2:29 – into the land Deu 5:16 – Honour Deu 21:18 – obey the voice Deu 27:16 – General Rth 3:6 – and did 1Sa 22:3 – Let my father 1Sa 24:8 – David stooped 2Sa 15:3 – there is Pro 15:20 – despiseth Jer 35:6 – Ye shall Jer 35:18 – Because Mat 19:18 – Thou shalt do Mar 7:10 – Honour Mar 10:19 – commit Rom 13:7 – honour to Rom 13:9 – For this Eph 6:2 – General 1Ti 5:3 – Honour Heb 12:9 – we gave 1Pe 2:17 – Honour

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

REVERENCE FOR PARENTS

Honour thy father and thy mother.

Exo 20:12

I. Consider various ways in which a man may honour his father and mother: (1) by doing his best in the way of self-improvement; (2) by habits of care and frugality; (3) by keeping himself in soberness, temperance, and chastity.

II. Honour to parents is only the principal and most important application of a general principle. The Apostle bids us honour all men, and again, In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

III. From the conception of love due to father and mother, we rise to the conception of the love due to God. When God calls Himself our Father, the clouds which conceal Him from our sight seem to break and vanish, and we feel that we can love and honour Him. Above all, we can recognise Him as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in Him, and through His incarnation, has adopted us into the highest condition of sonship, and made us heirs with Him of eternal life.

Bishop Harvey Goodwin.

SECOND OUTLINE

I. The Israelite, when he came into the land which the Lord God gave him, may have found many temptations not to honour his father and mother; and unless he believed that God knew what was good for him and for all men, and was commanding the thing that was right and true, and unless he believed that God would give him strength to obey that which He commanded, he would yield continually to his evil nature. But the words would be fulfilled to him. His days would be long in the land which the Lord his God gave him.

II. We too have the land for our inheritance. Our fathers and mothers belonged to it, as their fathers and mothers did, and while we reverence them, every one of us may feel that his days are indeed very long in this country. Yes, for they are not bounded by our birth, or by our death either. The country had people in it who belonged to us before we came into it; it will have those belonging to us when we have gone out of it. It is the Lord God who is, and was, and is to come, who has watched over our family, and will watch over those who shall come hereafter.

III. Count this commandment which God gives thee to be thy life. So out of the earthly honour there will spring one that is eternal. The vision of the perfect Father, the joy and blessedness of being His child, will dawn upon thee more and more, and with the higher blessing there will come a greater enjoyment and appreciation of the lower.

Rev. F. D. Maurice.

Illustration

(1) The Commandment bears the impress of the antique mode of thought in another respect, in that what it enjoins is neither obedience nor love, but honour. On the one hand, mere obedience to parental precepts would not suffice; but, on the other, the modern tendency to slur over the idea of parental authority, and melt all other filial duties into that of affection, is entirely alien from the spirit of the Old Testament. If I be a father, where is mine honour? says God through the last of the prophets. The Romans made much of the patria potestas, the parental authority, and the Jewish father was to command his household after him. The relation seems austere and cold to us, but it would be all the better for many an English household if modern fathers commanded, and children obeyed, a good deal more.

(2) There is a saloon-keeper in Cincinnati who dwells in a beautiful house, while his old father and mother live in a hovel. Some one asked him why he did not help them. Help them! he answered hotly. Why should I help them? Why? Why? exclaimed the gentleman in surprise. Because they are your parents, and brought you into the world. But I didnt ask them to bring me. I am under no obligation to them for it. Life is no blessing in itself. They didnt consult me! he replied. Now I want to ask any one who does not believe that life is a gift of God, and is (in its potentiality) a good, how is he going to get around the saloon-keepers argument? I cannot help thinking that it is into just that awful selfishness that atheism, and perhaps even agnosticism, will land men. Either life is a blessing, and the gift of a loving God, or else it is of no value in itself, and a man has a perfect right to neglect, and even curse, the beings who brought him into it without his consent. On this supposition, what becomes of civilisation? Does anybody believe that civilisation could be perpetuated on the creed of the saloon-keeper? Reverence for children (and childhood) and for parents (and old age) are the two rails on which the car of civilisation runs, and you will ditch it if you take up either one.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

We now have to consider the six commandments that are concerned with man’s duty in regard to his fellows. Sin has not only estranged man from God, so that the rights of the Creator have to be safeguarded, but utterly disorganized society, so that fundamental human rights have to be maintained. Only the first commandment of the six is of a positive nature. The last five are of a negative sort – “Thou shalt not.”

The honouring of both father and mother is the one positive command. In God’s ordering of human society the family is the fundamental unit, and of that unit the father and mother are the responsible heads, and to be recognized and honoured as such. If they are not so honoured rapid disintegration sets in, and all the relations of life are adversely affected. Proof of this stares us in the face today. Men of wholesome mind – magistrates, and others – join in deploring what is called “juvenile delinquency,” as directly traceable to the break-up of home life. In most cases the parents themselves are mainly to blame. Obsessed with the pleasures of sin, parental discipline is neglected, and the children left to their own devices.

The Apostle Paul points out in Eph 6:2 that this is “the first commandment with promise;” the promise being long life in the land which was to be given to them. Conversely, the flouting of this command was to entail severe penalty, as we see in Deu 21:18-21. The penalty pronounced against the “stubborn and rebellious son,” who would not, “obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother,” may seem to us very drastic, but it serves to emphasize the great importance of this fifth commandment in the thought of God. Were it faithfully and universally observed, there would be very little infringement of the remaining five commandments.

In the sixth commandment there is the safeguarding of human life, of which God is the Source. Man cannot give life and he has no right to take it away, except he does so as ordained of God. After the flood Noah was authorized to slay animals for food, and government was established and the sword committed to his hand, so that death should be the penalty for murder. In the New Testament we are reminded that the earthly authority “beareth not the sword in vain” (Rom 13:4), which shows that the introduction of grace in Christ has not nullified what has been established as to government in the earth. Authorized government takes its course, but murder is strictly forbidden.

The seventh commandment safeguards the purity of human life. “Adultery” here has the widest sense, covering what are considered to be lesser forms of this sin between the sexes. The history of peoples shows those who have widely practised this evil have degraded themselves both physically and mentally, and out of it spring a host of other ills.

The eighth commandment enforces the rights of personal property. There was some measure of communal life amongst the children of Israel, and in the New Testament we read of a brief period of Christian communism, when many sold properties, and in Jerusalem they had all things in common. But even then the rights of private property were not set aside, for Peter said to Ananias, “While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” (Act 5:4). Yes, it belonged to Ananias, and no one had the right to grab it away from him. The law forbade stealing, and when today anyone is converted the word is, “Let him that stole steal no more” (Eph 4:28).

The ninth safeguards truth against man’s sinful propensity to distort it into positive lying. A man may lie as to almost anything, but what is specially prohibited is his tendency to lie at the expense of his neighbour. The devil, we know, is the father of lies, but since man fell under his-influence he has become a very apt pupil in that direction. In this world lies have become one of the most potent forces of evil. We may note that while killing and stealing are two of the commonest and worst forms of violence, adultery and lying are two of the commonest and worse worst forms of corruption. All four are most destructive of human happiness. When they vanish in the millennial age the world will become a paradise.

But of all the commandments the tenth is the one that most surely brings conviction and a sense of the death sentence into the soul, if it be honestly faced. We find the Apostle Paul saying, “I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” (Rom 7:7); and he goes on to say, “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” We all know that fallen human nature is such, that the fact of anything being prohibited stirs up a desire for that very thing. Quite possibly, before the prohibition reached us, the thing was not even in our mind; but, reaching us, the thing was presented to our mind, and at once the covetous desire was there, and we realized we were dead men in the sight of the law.

In the tenth commandment, then, God legislated against not only evil things but against the desire for evil things, and this makes it so death-dealing for the awakened conscience. It was in keeping with this that the Lord Jesus removed the weight of the law against both murder and adultery from the act to the desire and impulse that prompts the act, when He gave His Sermon on the Mount, reported in Mat 5:1-48. Hence also the warning against covetousness, which the Lord uttered, in Luk 12:1-59; and the statement of the Apostle Paul, “Mortify therefore… covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col 3:5).

When the rich young ruler approached the Lord with his question as to eternal life, Jesus tested him with five out of the ten commandments. He did not cite the first four, dealing with what is due to God, nor did He mention the tenth. The young man could say he had kept the five that the Lord mentioned. No doubt he had, if only the prohibited acts were in question. Had he been tested on the basis of the tenth, he would have been hopelessly condemned.

Verses Exo 20:18-21 give us the immediate reaction of the people to the giving of the law. Twice we get the words, “afar off.” They had not yet had time to commit any breach of what was enjoined, but they were conscious at once that distance had supervened between themselves and God. Further, they begged Moses to act as mediator, saying, “Let not God speak with us, lest we die.” So these two things – distance and death – laid their fear upon them. To the Galatians it was written, “As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse” (Gal 3:10). Paul did not say, “As many as have broken the law.” Such are of course under the curse. But man being what he is, it is sufficient for him to be, “of the works of the law,” that is, standing before God on that basis, to be under the curse. That is just what we see in the passage before us.

Moses realized that the law was given as a test, for he said, “God is come to prove you.” The people moreover were to realize the gravity of the position in which they had set themselves. They appear to have taken up that position in quite a light-hearted way, and God intended that His fear should be before their faces, so that they might not sin. If fear could induce the fulfilling of the law all would have been well for there was everything present to provoke fear. We have to turn to the New Testament to learn that, “Love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:10).

In the closing verses of the chapter we get what the people were not to make, and what they were to make. They were not to make gods, even of the most precious substances. They were to make an altar of earth. In the next chapter we get the “judgments” that accompanied the ten commandments, and the first of these is concerned with the “Hebrew servant.”

Now at first sight the sequence of these subjects may seem strange, and especially we might be tempted to regard these regulations as to what was to be done when an Hebrew undertook the modified form of slavery that was permitted, as a descent into something very trivial compared with the thunders of the law. We discover it to be far otherwise when we consider their spiritual import. The giving of the law became a ministry of death. Nothing could meet that situation but sacrifice, hence next comes the altar. But where can a sufficient sacrifice be found? Only in the One, of whom the Hebrew servant was a type.

As to the altar, it was to be of earth or of unhewn stone. If men were to lift up their tools upon the stones to shape them according to their thoughts, they would pollute it. An altar of earth or of unhewn stone might seem very crude and offensive to aesthetic taste, but since it typified death – the death of Christ – God intended it to stand in its native roughness and not be embellished by art and human device.

Neither was the altar to be placed in an elevated position and approached by steps, as was the custom apparently with the altars of the heathen. We may give this a present-day application if we point out that in the sacrifice of Christ God has come down to us, so that we are not to attempt to climb up to Him. When men endeavour to do this, they only expose their own nakedness in a spiritual sense.

A peculiar form of bond-service was permitted amongst the children of Israel, details of which we have in the early verses of Exo 21:1-36. An Hebrew might place himself under such a bond for six years, but in the seventh he was to go out free; and if he came under it with a wife, she went out free with him. If, on the other hand, he obtained his wife through his master, and children were given, complications ensued as we find in verses Exo 20:4-6. In these complications we find a remarkable type.

If the bondman should declare that for love of master, wife and children he will not go out free, saying this plainly and distinctly, then his master shall take him before the judges, and to the door – normally the place of exit – and there shed a few drops of his blood by piercing his ear against the door or door post. Then henceforward he should be a servant in perpetuity. Such was the first of the “judgments” under the law.

We cannot but wonder if ever a Hebrew servant did say, “I love my master, my wife, and my children,” thus placing his master before wife and children. We can only say that the master would have to be a most wonderful person to gain such a place of ascendancy. But when our blessed Lord took the servant’s place, He came primarily to do the will of God in devotion to His glory, and secondarily to establish a relationship with redeemed men that nothing will be allowed to break. The Antitype of this we see in Joh 13:1 and Exo 14:31.

In that Gospel, while the Deity of our Lord is fully stated, the place He took of subjection and dependence is made very manifest. At the close of the discourse in the Upper Chamber the Lord went forth to Gethsemane and Golgotha that the world might know that He loved the Father. The Evangelist had previously told us that having loved His own in the world He loved them to the end. His declaration of love to the Father, whom He came to serve and of love to those that He brought into relationship to Himself, could not have been more plainly made.

His love led Him into death. In the type we have only a faint type of this, but the spot of blood on the doorpost, where the ear was bored, does lead our thoughts to the true shedding of blood, when our Saviour was hanged on the tree.

Verses Exo 20:7-11 deal with the case of the woman who becomes a bondservant. As the weaker party she might become the victim of wrongful treatment, so her rights are clearly defined. We may remark that under the law things were permitted that would not be tolerated by Christians today. That this was so is shown by the Lord’s own words recorded in Mat 19:7, Mat 19:8. We must ever bear in mind that, “the law made nothing perfect” (Heb 7:19), since it set forth the minimum of God’s demands, so that all, who in any way or at any time fell short of it, came under the sentence of death. The maximum of all God’s thoughts and desires are realized and set forth in Christ.

From verse Exo 20:12 to verse 27, we get judgments in regard to acts of violence, beginning with the differentiation between manslaughter and murder. For the former a place of refuge is promised. Later we find how amply this promise was fulfilled, for no less than six cities of refuge were appointed.

On the other hand, we notice that the severity of God is displayed in the law. The death sentence is pronounced against sins that today are not accounted worthy of the capital sentence – verses Exo 20:15, Exo 20:16-17, for instance – though we must remember that the wages of sin – of all sin – is death. The sentence of verse Exo 20:17 is one that our Lord quoted in Mat 15:4. To deprive forcibly a man of his liberty comes near to depriving him of his life, and this is legislated against in verse Exo 20:16.

Verses Exo 20:23-25, summarize the demands of the law as to these things, and to them the Lord referred in Mat 5:38; but there we see the grace of Christ beginning to appear.

The rest of the chapter is occupied with judgments connected with the ownership of cattle, and the violent acts they may perform, or violences that they may suffer. All is to be settled on a strictly righteous basis.

If in Exo 21:1-36 we get judgments which give an extension to “Thou shalt not kill,” we find in Exo 22:1-31 judgments giving an extension to “Thou shalt not steal.” Men may defraud each other in a variety of ways, and this theme continues to the end of verse Exo 20:17; for a maid may be defrauded of her virtue, and a penalty lies against this as against all the rest. The first demand is for “restitution,” and, if that be not possible then damages to be paid. No fairer form of penalty than this can be devised.

From verse Exo 20:18 to the end of the chapter we get sundry judgments that may not seem very closely connected, but they evidently cover both the rights of God Himself and also of the poor among His people. The witch commits an outrage against God by trafficking with demons. The sinner of verse Exo 20:18 outrages His order in creation. He who sacrifices to demon powers is to be destroyed. Verse 28 demands that the “gods” – the “elohim” who represented the one true God in matters of earthly judgment, were to be respected, and the following verses demand a steady yielding of the firstfruits to God, as befitted holy people.

The verses in between (21-27) safeguard the rights of the less important and more defenceless folk – strangers, widows, fatherless and poor. The tendency of fallen mankind is to take advantage of these, oppressing and defrauding them. Such conduct is abhorrent to God, and His kindness shines out, even as He gives His law. He will be their Defender. As He thinks of them His word is, “I am gracious.”

Fuente: F. B. Hole’s Old and New Testaments Commentary

SECOND TABLE OF THE LAW

FIFTH COMMANDMENT (Exo 20:12)

To honor means to regard with respect and loving fear. What reasons there are for it on the part of children toward their parents, who are under God the author of their existence, and their teachers, benefactors and rulers!

What promise is attached to this commandment? For a comment see Deu 5:16. Although this promise applies primarily to Israel in Canaan, as we see from Eze 22:7-15, yet its principle is true in Gods moral government everywhere.

The child who honors its parents of course wise and true parents are assumed gains the experience of the latter which makes for a good, and with necessary exceptions, a long life.

SIXTH COMMANDMENT (Exo 20:13)

The reference here is to the unlawful taking of life by suicide or homicide, but not to capital punishment for capital crimes (see Gen 9:6), nor

the taking of life in self-defense or lawful war. It forbids all violence, passion, lust, intemperance in eating or drinking, and any other habit which tends to shorten life. So far as the more spiritual import is concerned it interdicts envy, revenge, hatred, malice, or sinful anger, all that provokes to wrath or murder. See Mat 5:21-26; Mat 5:38-48 and 1Jn 3:15-17.

SEVENTH COMMANDMENT (Exo 20:14)

The Hebrew word for adultery refers to the unlawful act taking place between man and woman where either or both are married, thus differing from another word commonly translated fornication and where the same act is referred to between unmarried persons.

Because the sanctity of the marriage relation is the object aimed at it prohibits everything contrary to the spirit of that in thought, word or deed. (See Mat 5:27-32.) We may therefore include not only lustful looks, motions and verbal insinuations, but modes of dress, pictures, books, theatrical displays, etc., which provoke the passions and incite to the unlawful act.

Sins of this character are more frequently forbidden in Scripture and more fearfully threatened than any other, and they are the cause of more shame, crime, misery and death. Moreover, they have one striking characteristic, viz: that you cannot think or talk about them without being more or less excited and led into temptation. How continually need we be praying the prayer of Psa 19:12.

EIGHTH COMMANDMENT (Exo 20:15)

As the sixth commandment secures the right of our neighbors life, and the seventh the right of his family, so this secures the right of his property. The essence of dishonesty is the possessing ourselves of that which rightfully belongs to another, for which there is a variety of ways besides putting our hands into his money-drawer fraudulent bargain, contraction of debts which we know we shall be unable to pay, cornering the market, graft, usury, evading taxes, false weights and measures, etc.

And as in the previous cases, so here also, the command reaches beyond outward acts to the spirit of them, and includes inordinate love for the world and the things that are in the world, living beyond our means, idleness, and everything that leads up to theft. This commandment may be regarded as the most comprehensive of all.

NINTH COMMANDMENT (Exo 20:16)

This refers primarily to testimony in courts of law (Deu 19:16-19), and differs from the three preceding in that it deals with words rather than deeds.

But, as in those cases, it has a larger import and prohibits everything in our dealings with one another not according to truth. Compare to Lev 19:16; Pro 19:9; Psa 15:2; Col 3:9.

Among some of these things might be named exaggeration in speech, polite equivocations, flattering compliments, and of course all classes of slander, backbiting, and imputations of evil where no evil is.

It is usually felt, however, that there is a distinction between telling a lie and concealing the truth or a part of the truth from those who have no right to demand it. The one is always wrong, the other sometimes may be right.

TENTH COMMANDMENT (Exo 20:17)

Covet means to earnestly desire or long after, a feeling not sinful in itself, but which becomes so under particular circumstances. Its sinfulness appears in longing for anything unlawful, or longing for that which is lawful to an inordinate degree. A passing wish to have anything our neighbor possesses may be innocent, but to long for it excessively is prohibited.

The reason for the prohibition is that such longing begets a grudging, discontented and envious spirit, which leads often to injustice and violence.

The case of David who coveted Uriahs wife and finally caused him to be slain is in point.

From deeds and words the decalogue has thus come to deal with the thoughts and intents of the heart, the fountainhead of sin; and that it reaches deep into the interior of human life, read Pauls words in Rom 7:7-14.

These words deserve careful consideration. He once said that touching the righteousness which is in the law he was blameless (Php 3:6) a wonderful thing for a man of his honesty and introspection to say! How then may we explain him saying near the end of his life that he is the chief of sinners (1Ti 1:15)? The explanation is found in Romans 7. Meditating upon the tenth commandment he observed that it had to do not with the body but the mind. From this he argued that the other commandments reigned in the same mental area. Taught by the Spirit, he perceived that far from being blameless, he had daily transgressed the principles of the decalogue even though he had never broken them outwardly. The law did for him what God intends it to do for all of us. It killed him, slaying his self-righteousness and taking the life out of his self- confidence. As he thus lay hopeless in the dust of his earthliness it led him to the Savior of the lost (Gal 3:24).

QUESTIONS

1. What does honor mean in the fifth commandment?

2. What sins are most frequently forbidden and threatened in Scripture?

3. How may covet be qualified?

4. Which commandment has most to do with the mind?

5. Can you quote Gal 3:24?

Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary

Exo 20:12. We have here the laws of the second table, as they are commonly called, the last six commandments, which concern our duty to ourselves and one another, and are a comment upon the second great commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. As religion toward God is an essential branch of universal righteousness, so righteousness toward men is an essential branch of true religion: godliness and honesty must go together. The fifth commandment is concerning the duties we owe to our relations; that of children to their parents is only instanced in, honour thy father and thy mother Which includes, 1st, An inward esteem of them, outwardly expressed upon all occasions in our carriage toward them. The contrary to this is mocking at them or despising them. 2d, Obedience to their lawful commands; so it is expounded, Eph 6:1-2, Children, obey your parents; come when they call you, go where they send you, do what they bid you, do not what they forbid you; and this cheerfully, and from a principle of love. Though you have said you will not, yet afterward, repent and obey. 3d, Submission to their rebukes, instructions, and corrections, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. 4th, Disposing of themselves with the advice, direction, and consent of parents, not alienating their property, but with their approbation. 5th, Endeavouring in everything to be the comfort of your parents, and to make their old age easy to them; maintaining them if they stand in need of support. That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee This promise (which is often literally fulfilled) is expounded in a more general sense, Eph 6:3, That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. Those that, from conscience toward God, keep this and other of Gods commandments, may be sure it shall be well with them, and they shall live as long on the earth as infinite wisdom sees will be good for them; and what they may seem to be cut short of on earth, shall be abundantly made up in eternal life, the heavenly Canaan, which God will give them.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

20:12 Honour thy {h} father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

(h) By parents it is also meant all that have authority over us.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The fifth commandment 20:12

"The first four commandments set forth the principles guiding Israel’s relationship to Yahweh; and the last six commandments set forth the principles guiding Israel’s relationship with the covenant community, and more broadly, with the human family. As the second, third, and fourth commandments are in many ways extensions of the first commandment, the first four commandments are the foundation for the final six commandments. And all of the commandments, as principles governing covenant relationships, are founded on the ultimate OT statement of relationship, which stands as prologue to the ten commandments: ’I am Yahweh, your God’ . . . Because Yahweh is, and is Israel’s God, Israel both is and must become a certain and special people." [Note: Durham, p. 290.]

All Israelites were to honor their parents because parents are God’s representatives to their children in God’s administrative order. Thus the fifth commandment is as foundational to commandments six through ten as the first commandment is to commandments two through four. The Israelites were to honor God because He had given them life, and they were to honor their parents because they were His instruments in giving them life. The promise of long life in the Promised Land is a reminder that God gave the command to Israelites. The Apostle Paul repeated this responsibility as binding on the church in Eph 6:1-3 but changed the command to "obey," as well as the promise (cf. Mat 15:3-4; Col 3:20). [Note: See Maurice E. Wagner, "How to Honor Your Parents When They’ve Hurt You," Psychology for Living 28:6 (June 1986):12-14.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT.

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”– Exo 20:12.

This commandment forms a kind of bridge between the first table and the second. Obedience to parents is not merely a neighbourly virtue; we do not honour them simply as our fellow-men: they are the vicegerents of God to our childhood; through them He supplies our necessities, defends our feebleness, and pours in light and wisdom upon our ignorance; by them our earliest knowledge of right and wrong is imparted, and upon the sanction of their voice it long depends.

It is clear that parental authority cannot be undermined, nor filial disobedience and irreverence gain ground, without shaking the foundations of our religious life, even more perhaps than of our social conduct.

Accordingly this commandment stands before the sixth, not because murder is a less offence against society, but because it is more emphatically against our neighbour, and less directly against God.

The human infant is dependent and helpless for a longer period, and more utterly, than the young of any other animal. Its growth, which is to reach so much higher, is slower, and it is feebler during the process. And the reason of this is plain to every thoughtful observer. God has willed that the race of man should be bound together in the closest relationships, both spiritual and secular; and family affection prepares the heart for membership alike of the nation and the Church. With this inner circle the wider ones are concentric. The pathetic dependence of the child nourishes equally the strong love which protects, and the grateful love which clings. And from our early knowledge of human generosity, human care and goodness, there is born the capacity for belief in the heart of the great Father, from Whom every family in heaven and earth derived its Greek name of Fatherhood (Eph 3:15).

Woe to the father whose cruelty, selfishness, or evil passions make it hard for his child to understand the Archetype, because the type is spoiled! or whose tyranny and self-will suggest rather the stern God of reprobation, or of servile, slavish subjection, than the tender Father of freeborn sons, who are no more under tutors and governors, but are called unto freedom.

But how much sorer woe to the son who dishonours his earthly parent, and in so doing slays within himself the very principle of obedience to the Father of spirits!

No earthly tie is perfect, and therefore no earthly obedience can be absolute. Some crisis comes in every life when the most innocent and praiseworthy affection becomes a snare–when the counsel we most relied upon would fain mislead our conscience–when a man, to be Christ’s disciple, must “hate father and mother,” as Christ Himself heard the temptation of the evil one speaking through chosen and beloved lips, and said “Get thee behind Me, Satan.” Even then we shall respect them, and pray as Christ prayed for His failing apostle, and when the storm has spent itself they shall resume their due place in the loving heart of their Christian offspring.

So Jesus, when Mary would interrupt His teaching, said “Who is My mother?” But imminent death could not prevent Him from pitying her sorrow, and committing her to His beloved disciple as to a son.

From the letter of this commandment streams out a loving influence to sanctify all the rest of our relationships. As the love of God implies that of our brother also, so does the honour of parents involve the recognition of all our domestic ties.

And even unassisted nature will tend to make long the days of the loving and obedient child; for life and health depend far less upon affluence and luxury than upon a well-regulated disposition, a loving heart, a temper which can obey without chafing, and a conscience which respects law. All these are being learned in disciplined and dutiful households, which are therefore the nurseries of happy and righteous children, and so of long-lived families in the next generation also. Exceptions there must be. But the rule is clear, that violent and curbless lives will spend themselves faster than the lives of the gentle, the loving, the law-abiding and the innocent.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary