5th Commandment: Honor Your Father and Mother

Reflection Questions

• Why does Yahweh create such a strong connection between honoring parents and living long in the land of promise that he is giving Israel?

• The same word in Hebrew (kabbed) is used to honor a person and to glorify God. How does honoring people relate to honoring God?

• This command was primarily directed to adult men with aging parents. How does that feel different than a command primarily directed to children?

• How do Jesus and the apostles expand the wisdom of the 5th Commandment?

Chapter 1: Recap and Setup for the Fifth Command

In Exodus 1-19, Yahweh frees Israel from slavery and enters into a covenant partnership with the people, calling them to be a kingdom of priests to the nations. The 10 Commandments are the first values he gives them as part of this new covenant. Commandments one through four focus on how we relate to God. Then, commandments six through 10 are about how we relate to other humans. In between them is the 5th Commandment (Exod. 20:12) about honoring your parents. This command acts like a hinge, because how we relate to these humans holds special importance in our relationship with God.

Chapter 2: The Unique Role of Parents Compared to Yahweh

In the fifth command, Yahweh makes a direct connection between honoring parents and long life and prosperity in Canaan, the land of promise (Exod. 20:12). This is the only command with such a promise. Ironically, it is rarely referenced as a reason for Israel’s later exile (Ezek. 22:6-8 being a rare mention).

Among all human relationships, parents play a unique role in bringing us into the world and taking care of us until adulthood. In that sense, we can compare our relationship with our parents to our relationship with God, the giver and sustainer of life. Additionally, the repetition of “your” in the command—“your father and your mother,” “your days,” and “your Elohim”—clues us into the special connection between parents, Yahweh, and long life in the land.

The command seems primarily to have biological parents in mind. However, the Torah also has a category for adoptive parents or relatives who act as a parent to younger relatives, as with Moses and Pharaoh’s daughter in Exodus 2 and Abraham with his nephew Lot in Genesis 11:27-12:4.

Chapter 3: The Meaning of “Honor”

The Hebrew verb “honor” (kabbed) and the noun “glory” (kavod) come from the same root word, which literally means “heavy, important, or significant” (1 Sam. 4:18 is a literal use). When most English translations talk about giving heaviness, importance, or significance to a person, they say “honor,” but when referring to God, they usually say “glorify” (Prov. 3:9; Prov. 14:31). But they’re the same verb, kabbed, in Hebrew.

We honor people through words and actions, and in the Hebrew Bible, there is a strong connection between honor and economic support. The “you” in the fifth command is in the second-masculine-singular tense, so it is primarily directed to adult men who are to honor their aging parents by financially supporting them.

In a story referenced in Matthew 15:1–9 and Mark 7:1–13, Jesus makes clear that to honor your father and mother at least means ensuring that they’re economically provided for.

Chapter 4: An Expansive View of Honoring the Elderly

While Jesus reemphasized the wisdom of the fifth command, he also valued allegiance to the Kingdom of God more highly than familial blood ties (Luke 14:26; Mark 3:20-21, 31-35). As a result, the early Jesus communities expanded the wisdom of the fifth command to honor and care for not only their own parents but also all the elderly people among them (1 Tim. 5:3-8). The invitation is the same for us: to honor all older people in our communities as if they are our own parents.