The Ten Commandments
Part 3
Exodus 20:12, “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”
Deuteronomy 5:16, “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”
“Honor your father and your mother:” Honor, a term of tribute. Leviticus 19:3, “You shall each revere your mother and father.” Honoring your parents is to revere them, to regard them with great respect and treat them to standards of conduct that reflect reverence and high regard by fulfilling the obligations due them.
Why honor parents: it is fitting that every person realizes that his or her parents are the cause of his or her being in the world. The parents labored through many thousands of hours over each child from birth to early adulthood. Yes, there are many joys but also many times of troubles and worries. Hence, it is proper for a child to give parents every honor and every benefit that he or she can. This honor is basic to the integrity of the family and the stability of society as well as generational continuity.
Actions demonstrate honor: The Bible explicitly requires honor and respect in relations to God and parents. Honor is a duty, an obligation for parents and child. Parents must train and coach their child to establish habits, attitudes and actions of honor and respect for God and parents. That must go hand in hand with parental actions that demonstrate honor and respect for their child. Proper language is a powerful teacher. From the time the child begins to talk, little things like teaching your child to say please and thank you, to answer adults’ questions with Yes sir, No sir, and Yes ma’am, and No ma’am are a beginning of that teaching. As the child grows, he or she may disagree with his or her parents or other people from time to time; teach them to respectful disagree. A part of respectfully disagreeing is patiently listening to those with whom he or she disagrees. Parents are to teach their child to forgive freely those who do make mistakes including forgiving themselves. Gentle correction of a child’s mistakes are a part of them learning honor. Later in life, circumstances change. Duty requires that the child have to make sure that the parents have enough to eat, have a safe home and have transportation when needed. If parents can do these things for themselves and afford their needs, the child is not obligated to provide or pay for parents’ comforts. In fact, parents feel better when they can support themselves physically and financially. If that is getting just too hard for the grown child to do, he or she must find other ways to assist even it means get hiring help.
A child is not quarrel with his or her parents. There is always a respectful way to discuss issues. “I cannot approve of you doing that, Dad!” is also disrespectful. Mom and dad do not require your approval. Unless they ask you to, do not call—or even refer—to your parents by name, even posthumously: they are mom and dad. If your parents are psychologically unstable, a child must still respect them. A child is also obligated to respect stepparents, parents-in-law, grandparents and older siblings.
“As the LORD your God commanded you:” He is serious. Parents are the vice-regents of the Heavenly Father. From the parents is where the child learns obedience and how ladies and gentlemen are to conduct themselves. It is a mistake to view civil authority as superior to parental authority when just the opposite is true. Acknowledgement of parental authority reinforces the fabric of human society, makes possible the transmission of values and the progress of humanity.
From Exodus, “so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” and, from Deuteronomy, “it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” These phases, in slightly different wordings, occur at least twenty-five times in the Bible. The meaning is simple: obeying God’s Commandments so that you may live, prosper, prolong your days and have a positive effect on the nation in which you live. I contend that if the majority of the people of the world lived by these commandments, the world would be a far happier place—more of that later.
I have given you a brief overview of the Fifth Commandment. Now we look at some of the effects of following God’s law: This commandment is comprehensive in that its application for child’s behavior toward his or her parents is different at different ages; dependence of the child on the parents’ changes over time to dependence of the parents on the child. Honoring parents will involve different acts and modes of being as the child grows and the parents’ age for the situation of a child of five with parents that are in their twenties is different than that of a child of fifty-five with parents that are in their seventies. Situations change even beyond that. Perhaps the father is deceased, and the mother is alone, this commandment demands taking such changes in circumstances into account. The shift in responsibility incumbent upon child and parents governs the responsibility in a given relationship that one did not create but cannot abandon. Being a child puts one in a relational category, not an age category.
This commandment has great cultural impact and is fundamental to a healthy society. This parent-child child-parent relationship is great training for “love thy neighbor.” Neighborly relationships begin in the family circle. Here, a child can make mistakes and be lovingly corrected. Bad treatment of mother and father leads to bad treatment of other members in the community particularly of the weaker and more vulnerable persons. That leads to poor and unhappy relationships. Bad treatment and/or neglect of a child by parents is even more devastating. Loving treatments in parent-child relations lead to good results and much happier people.
“Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you” also has to do with our respect for and obedience to authority. This respect for authority and obedience to authority starts with in the child-parents’ relationship. Without this obedience to authority, societies crumble. Obedience is a duty. It encompasses one’s responsibility for the safety and good of oneself, one’s parents, one’s neighbors, one’s community and our nation. Those in authority protect our rights and thus we are responsible to elect and obey those in authority. This elect and obey includes elected officials from president to our local sheriff and those who our laws appoint over us. The Fifth Commandment’s aim is broad rather than narrow; this commandment affects all relationships.
Now for some editorial remarks: “So that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land.” Things are not going well in America today. With the removal of the Ten Commandments from our schools and courthouse walls, our emphasis on this foundation of America’s ever-improving culture has not only stopped, it is declining. Honor our father and mother is completely lacking in many homes. The results, we have seen a decrease in respect for authority and a frightening increase in violent crime. Disobedient disrespectful children have grown into disrespectful disobedient adults. It is my opinion that many of today’s problems are due to the lack parental leadership in many homes especially during the formative years of a child’s life. Today, politicians want to control those formative years filling our children not with honor thy parents but with secular values. We even have major politicians insisting that parents should have no role in directing the education of their children. Honor thy father and thy mother is a most important commandment. Let us pray for a return to it.
As we move out of the commandments that concern our duties to God and parents, we move into the commandments concerning life with our neighbors. The aim of the last five commandments is to protect the well-being of each member of the community. These commandments place upon each person a responsibility to others. We begin these last five commandments with the one that protects life itself.
The Commandment: Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17, “You shall not murder.” The King James Version of the Bible along with several other versions of the Bible interpreted the Hebrew word harag in the Exodus as “kill.” However, the word used in Deuteronomy is hemit; that means, “put to death.” Translations that are more recent have recognized that the Hebrew verbs used in the two versions of this commandment are more specialized than the verbs once commonly translated into the English “kill”. Those Hebrew words are more accurately translated “murder”. This makes sense as the Bible sanctions killing in cases self-defense and national wars. The Bible also distinguishes between accidental killing and murder. Other English words that indicate an intentional form of murder are genocide, euthanasia, abortion and the like. “You shall not murder.” is the more meaningful translation.
Even if we did not have Ten Commandments, murder is obviously wrong. Murder is a part of a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct. These unchanging moral principles are called Natural Law. Therefore, naturally, nearly all societies have laws against murder.
For Christians and Jews, we see another aspect of taking a human life: The most precious of gift God bestows is life. Further, God created all of us in His image. Therefore, to murder is to blaspheme God. To murder someone not only extinguishes that person’s life; it extinguishes all life that may have come from that person, all his or her descendants.
Numbers Chapter 35:6-34 discuss accidental killing in depth. Numbers 35:6, “The towns that you give to the Levites shall include the six cities of refuge, where you shall permit a slayer to flee, ….” “A slayer,” or “manslayer” in some translations, is someone who accidentally killed a person. To protect such a person, the law designated six cities of asylum for people who had killed someone unintentionally, and felt that he or she could not get a fair hearing in the area where the act occurred. Examples of people who are eligible for cities of refuge are a stonemason who accidentally drops a stone on someone below killing that person. Someone who hits another with his hand not intending to kill but that person dies. These cities were also protection against vendettas. Number 35 goes on to say that killings a person with an iron or stone or wooden implements designed to kill was not eligible for cities of refuge. If the court found that the killer purposefully planned to kill, the punishment was more severe because such actions negatively affected the safety of the community.
In our country, we have six types of murder and three types of manslaughter. Murder charges range from first degree for premeditated murder, second degree for intent to harm but did not intend to kill, on down justifiable homicide. Manslaughter ranges from accidental killing down to voluntary manslaughter where someone takes a life during circumstances that alter a killer’s behavior. Further, defendants who have fears about getting a fair trial may ask for a change of venue, they have the opportunity to cast out jurors who may be biased and they may label some witnesses prejudice. Cities of refuge are based on the same ideas.
Prohibitions against irresponsible decisions and actions are laws that help prevent accidentally killing. For example, a parapet is a low protective wall along the edge of a roof. Deuteronomy 22:8, “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it.” This law makes people responsible to take into account the health and safety of one’s community. This verse seems to concern a mundane detail from everyday life, yet the law about parapets is much broader; it has at least two meanings: one is the simple literal meaning and the other the creative outgrowth of the simple into wide-ranging principles. The simple meaning: most houses of the ancient Middle Eastern countries had flat roofs. During the day, the roof served as a work area. The hot Middle Eastern sun made the roof an ideal place for such activities as drying grain. At night, the roof was a cooler place to sleep in the warmer weather. Parapets were to prevent people from falling off the roof. The parapet had to be high enough and strong enough to prevent accidents like rolling off the roof while sleeping to protecting children playing from stumbling and falling off. If someone did fall off, the owner was liable. If someone pushed someone off resulting in injury or death, both the perpetrator and the owner of the house would get exactly the same punishment. Today, many states call deaths due to reckless behavior negligent homicide.
The broader meaning: the same scriptural principle teaches that any person in charge of a property is obligated to remove or make harmless anything that might cause serious injury or death. God expects us to foresee the injuries that can ensue from our actions, decisions and passiveness. God wants us to build the kind of world that enhances the health and safety of all. Genesis 4:9, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Only a murderer like Cain totally renounces his or her obligations to humankind. We are our brother’s keeper. Deuteronomy 16:20, “Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”
Another related scripture, Leviticus 19:17, “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.” This commandment seeks to stop and protect life by focusing on vengeance, envy, bigotry and intolerance; the mindsets that evokes hostile acts. Jesus covers this in Matthew 5:21-22, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” Protection of life involves the heart as well as the hand. We are obligated to control our attitudes and feelings. Anger and/or hatred inspire hostile acts. Jesus says stop it before it becomes hate.
The same applies to the preservation of life. God forbids us to hurt, harm or kill another person because He wants us to hold our neighbor’s life as precious as our own. “You shall not murder.” tells us that whatever sways us to hate and/or be violent is wrong. Leviticus 19:17, “Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.” Matthew 22:39 and Mark 12:31, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” God not only condemns envy, hatred and anger, He requires us to love our neighbor by showing patience, peace, gentleness, mercy and friendliness toward our neighbor and to prevent injury of any sort to him or her. Ephesians 4:26, “’In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” Ephesians 4:31-5:2, “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
I hope you see that “You shall not murder.” encompasses a great deal. So do next week’s laws, the six the commandment (marriage, sex and neighbors) and the seventh commandment (property and possessions). May God bless each of you. Amen.
