Honor your father and mother

… a commandment to die for? by Bruce Power

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any of us must plead guilty to commandmentizing with a child in a difficult moment. You don’t recognize this participle? An example may clarify its meaning. It’s a difficult moment at home with one of your offspring. You declare: “Didn’t we teach you to honor your father and mother? So why are you acting like this?” It can be a great moment of satisfaction to bring God into your corner and finalize the dispute with a winning bit of rhetoric! A sort of verbal knock out punch to win an argument with dispatch and divine authority. But beyond the minor issue of whether bashing someone with a commandment is really God honoring comes that nasty secondary inquiry. Is it accurate?

That honoring your parents was taken seriously in ancient Israel is made pretty clear in a related text. “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear about it and be afraid” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Wow! “Purge the evil!” Does this mean little children who were chronically disobedient were dragged to the gate of town for summary execution? Or was this only applied to the rebellious teenager escorted home in a drunken stupor by the town constabulary–after joyriding through town on the family burro?

While many parents must confess to having declared “I’ll kill you,” the intent is usually rhetorical, for effect or out of a sense of frustration or anger. And the declaration “Dad’s gonna kill me,” is not understood to announce the launching of legal proceedings that could result in a death penalty. But beyond the idea of executing progeny, the text presses our thinking even further. Not only does the action require the consent of both father and mother to the impending execution of little Abraham or Sarah, a more reflective decision is intended requiring a trial and evidence being presented before community leaders. Are these stipulations for children? Not likely. The rebellious son envisioned has consistently set himself outside the boundaries of normal family life, and of basic community standards and values. Both parents agree that he deserves death, and so they restrain him and bring him to the town court to face trial. If convicted, execution by “the men of his town” will follow. Not surprisingly we have no text which describes such an execution. Would you stay around to be brought to trial? Can you imagine such a rebellious, uncontrollable son being escorted to the gate of town by mom and dad? And how many parents would agree to such a radical solution with even the most wayward son?

Clearly an ideal is being set before us. Many elements help us focus on the main point of this legislation. The intent is defined as being to “purge the evil from among you.” When this command is faithfully kept, “all Israel will hear about it and be afraid.” Certainly a series of such events would get the neighborhood residents’ attention, especially when the stoning envisioned calls for all community leaders to endorse the decision. The point of such fear? It is a call and motivation for all adults to embrace the value systems summarized in the command to honor father and mother. And to teach them to their children. Which raises the question, what are those values?

Honoring father and mother can easily become the stuff of Sunday school memorization, and other admonitions for training children. But as we are beginning to understand, such focus loses the central point the commandment seeks to make. The Ten Commandments begin by calling us to recognize God. The declaration from Sinai is introduced by God’s self identification. “I am the Lord your God …” (Exodus 20:2). Four stipulations define this relationship. In the Hebrew text each begins “Not.” There are to be “no gods before me,” “no idols …,” “ no bowing down to an idol,” and “no lifting up the name of the Lord in vain.” Between these demands defining how we are to honor God, and negative commands to “Not murder, not commit adultery, not steal, not give false testimony, and not covet” are two commandments which hold us to ideal positives. They begin “Remember …” and “Honor ….” While the numbering of the commandments is a thorny issue resolved in a variety of confessional traditions, the literary structure is clear however we number them. All the commandments with the exception of these two begin with the negative particle, “Not.”

Why are these two commandments simply imperatives? Why are “Remember the sabbath … [and] Honor your father and mother” set apart in this manner?

The sabbath command is a call to live counterculturally in response to God. Sabbath traditions declare God’s intent to establish a rhythm to life, an order to creation. Sabbath observance calls us to merge the commandments which speak about our treatment of God, with those that specify our treatment of each other. [1] Likewise the injunction to honor father and mother is a command with implications for both our relationship with God and our relationships with other humans. Given its placement at the head of the list of stipulations directed towards humans, we might suspect that the command to honor parents would be a critical one, a commandment intended to set the stage for our understanding of the remaining commandments, those which define standards for human behavior. When we examine the text of the command carefully, we are not disappointed.

Implicit in the sabbath command is a recognition that the honoring of God is to be worked out in relationships within the human community, so it should not surprise us that the first specific commandment to address this point calls us to honor father and mother. Remarkably, kbd ‘honor,’ is the same root as is used to elsewhere to describe God’s glory. But it is not enough to be reminded that the glory of God is reflected in human life, and most especially in the love between parents and children. This relationship between parent and child is clearly marked as a primary example of the ideal for all human relationships. Honor of father and mother is in fact foundational to the remaining commandments regarding human relationships. We also note that this command has a consequence attached. We are to live out this commandment “so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12). So where does all of this lead?

For those of us in North America the concept of honoring parents is framed by a series of questions and scenarios far removed from those faced by more traditional societies, ancient and modern. Though honor and shame remain a part of the world of many in the West in quite abstract ways, honor is viewed as equal to respect, but is not always translated into action. And if honorable actions are undertaken, they are minimal in comparison to the demands of honor in most of the world through most of recorded history.

Let me illustrate. In most of the industrialized world, family relationships are important, but hardly the retirement plan for most people. Modern economic systems, government initiatives and social programs, and personal preparations combine to provide basic care for the elderly. The aged are provided with pensions, medical care, and a variety of other support systems which are provided and ensured by acts of state of various sorts. And while specifics may vary, the main providers of food, shelter and care for the elderly are not the family. Certainly, family support is desired and desirable, but in the case of the failure of family compliance, the result is not death, but rather loneliness and a sense of unimportance. Such things are not irrelevant but they do blur our understanding of the biblical meaning of the commandment to honor parents. In our highly individualized society, we are in danger of losing core values having to do with human worth and dignity. The legislation calling for honor of father and mother calls us to treat with honor those who have created the society we enjoy. It reminds us to value those who have given us the gift of life. And it serves to remind us that the honor we show others is reflective of our devotion to God. Jesus understood this when he reminded disciples that when acts of mercy were “done to the least of these” — to those diminished and marginalized by society because of age, race, gender, intelligence, abilities or a myriad of other reasons –they were rendered to him. The command to honor parents is valid when parents are strong and healthy and “in control.” It is also valid when time or circumstance change the situation.

Humans do not lose worth when aged. If humans are made in the image of God, the loss of physical or emotional abilities, senility, feebleness, or the loss of stamina should not trigger a loss of dignity or respect. We are challenged to not value persons by “productivity” but as divinely endowed with intrinsic worth. While parent and child are often used as metaphor for God and worshipper, we should not escape the accountability to which the commandment calls us by such devotional and intellectual gymnastics. Ideally all are to be treated with respect … but especially those who are powerless. Thus Deuteronomy calls for special care and attention to be afforded the widow and orphan, and the foreigner who is a visitor to the land. These are those who could not count on the family to care for them. They could easily be cast aside, and devalued by those who did not face such circumstances. In biblical tradition, human relationships are to be marked by honor, substance and worth being attributed to every person, especially when the recipient cannot return anything of monetary value or status enhancement, and in fact is a drain on the resources of others.

Such values must begin with us. We are called upon to teach our children to embrace these values by word and example as we honor God and each other by embracing them from day to day.

Bruce Power is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Booth College in Winnipeg. As well as continuing to research biblical traditions and the ancient Near East, he plays a little guitar and enjoys life in Toronto.

NOTES

[1] Please see “Can you remember a Sabbath” at http://therubicon.org/?p=110

1 Comment to Honor your father and mother

1. Terrific! Reading this calls me to honour and be honourable in all of society and especially in the relationships closest, in immediate family. Thanks
Jonathan Evans on March 9th, 2007

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