Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long on the land which the LORD your God gives you. The importance of this commandment is indicated by 1. Its positive form; 2. Its relative place; and, 3. Its accompanying promise. I. THE SCOPE OF THIS PRECEPT EMBRACES AN UNIVERSAL LAW OF SUBORDINATION WITH CORRESPONDING RELATIVE DUTIES. 1. A law of subordination is implied in the relation of a child to its parent. 2. This law of subordination is seen in similar relations to be the foundation of society. (1) Everywhere the older men are in authority, and the new comers must accept subjection. (2) Rank, wealth, station, genius, scholarship, and other phases of power exist around us, distinguishing certain individuals, and enriching them with definite advantages which in effect do subordinate other persons to them. (3) The king is the father of a larger household. Patriotism is the love of home upon a grander scale. 3. The law of subordination being thus the broad foundation of society, and the principle on which it is evidently constituted, this Divine order witnesses for the Divine origin of man. Society is now seen to be not a heap of unconnected sand, but a living tree, whose multitudinous branches, meeting in one stem, have their root in Him "from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named." II. SOME OF THE MORE PROMINENT APPLICATIONS OF THIS LAW. All these include responsibility as well as authority in the superior, and therefore rights as well as duties in the subordinate. 1. There is first the typical ease of parent and child. 2. Closely connected with the relation of parent and child, and even influencing it, is that mutual bond of husband and wife which affords the next great instance of the law of subordination. In her motherhood woman is the equal, in her wifehood the subordinate of man. 3. There are manifold other relations which illustrate the law of subordination — teachers and pupils, seniors and juniors, masters and servants, monarchs and subjects, magistrates and citizens, pastors and people. (W. J. Woods, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. |
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