Deuteronomy 5:16 Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you; that your days may be prolonged… Maurice says, "Many writers begin with considering mankind as a multitude of units. They ask, How did any number of these units form themselves into a society? I cannot adopt that method. At my birth I am already in a society. I am related, at all events, to a father and mother. This relation is the primary fact of my existence. I can contemplate no other facts apart from it." This commandment, then, has respect to the home life. Home is one of the sweetest words in our language; it speaks to us of heaven. It has been "childhood's temple and manhood's shrine"; it has been the safeguard of purity, the shield against temptation, the bulwark of all that is true and holy. Many a young man has been checked in his career of wickedness, and awakened to thoughtfulness and penitence by the remembrance of his early home. Here is the place where domestic virtues are cultivated, where the seeds of character are dropped into the mind and heart, where the holiest affections are kindled, and around which undying memories and associations gather. The mariner, as he treads the deck in the night watches, the missionary and the emigrant remember with gratitude and affection the old home; and the Australian settler sends up a cheer for the old land, and still calls it by the sweet name of "Home." It does not require a palace to make a home. There may be no architectural beauty, or abounding wealth, or costly furniture, or more costly paintings, or great luxuries; the dwelling may be a humble one. While children are commanded to honour their parents, the parents are to see to it that they deserve honour. Cowper said — "My boast is not that I derive my birth, From loins enthroned, or nobles of the earth But higher far my proud pretensions rise, The son of parents passed into the skies." It is a blessed thing to be able to say truly, My father was an upright man, a truthful, conscientious man, a Christian man; my mother taught me to pray, she prayed for me. As Thomas Fuller says, the good parent "showeth them, in his own practice, what to follow and imitate; and in others what to shun and avoid. For though 'the words of the wise be as nails fastened by the masters of the assemblies,' yet, sure, their examples are the hammer to drive them in, to take the deeper hold. A father that whipped his son for swearing, and swore himself while he whipped him, did more harm by his example than good by his correction." Let the parents be worthy of honour; and let the children learn to "honour their father and mother." This is God's command; and it is enforced by the obligations under which we are laid to our parents. And there is a promise annexed to this command. Paul speaks of it as "the first commandment with promise" — the first that has a specific promise attached to it. And the promise is, "that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." The penalty of disobedience to this command was death. "He that revileth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." "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 to 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 the city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear." And when the people stood on Mount Gerizim and on Mount Ebal, one of the maledictions that came from the summit of the latter was this, "Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother" — and all the people responded "Amen." The curse fell on Ham and his descendants for dishonouring his father. And whenever you see a family or a people, among whom these filial and parental ties are lax, you see the beginning of the curse that will surely fall. But here is a promise to the obedient, "That thy days may be long upon the land," etc. This was not only true to the Jews, but it is true now. Blessings rest on the heads of obedient, as contrasted with disobedient children. The Jews were about to possess Canaan; and as the Canaanites would be cast out because of their sins, so the Israelites would keep the land only by their obedience. Sin in their case, as in the case of the Canaanites, would produce bitter fruit; but obedience would be blessed. And this was the greatest earthly blessing they could obtain, long life in the promised land. It is also true now that obedience to God's laws, a holy character, tends to the preservation of physical life and vigour. (James Owen.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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