Commandment V:
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Exodus 20:12
“The laws of the SECOND table, that is, the last six of the ten commandments, state our duty to ourselves and to one another, and explain the great commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Mathew Henry
The first commandment of the second table of the Ten Commandments sets the foundation stone for the remaining five. The promise connected to the keeping of Commandment V underscores its importance as a promised blessing to us. If you honor your parents, you will be blessed “in the land” generationally. This is the foundation stone of society — the family — and honoring parents ensures the solidity of that foundation. It is essential to the moral code of political and economic society.
As William Ames puts it, “Honor is an acknowledgment of that dignity or excellence in another, with a due testifying of it”—in both inward and outward observance.*
What does this commandment teach us?
First:
Honoring parents is good for us long term.
Second:
Honoring parents makes us morally accountable to authority and teaches us that there is blessing in obedience.Â
Third:
Honoring parents strengthens communities and ultimately all of society.
Consider and Ponder: As parents, teachers, grandparents and all those privileged to work with children, we must teach our children this commandment as essential to all the others. This is God’s way of blessing families and nations.
*See The Marrow of Sacred Divinity by William Ames, translated by William H. Gross, OntheWing.org.