#Exodus 20:12

The fifth commandment

Honor your father and mother. What could be more straightforward than that? Well...I’m of the belief that this commandment refers primarily to post-mortem care (and feeding! probably), so I guess it’s not *totally* straightforward.

Uncomfortable with the idea that our beloved and honored ancestors in faith (kinda) were doing tangible things to care for their deceased ancestors? Might I direct you to the new book by @_kerrodactyl_, who will set you straight on how widespread this practice was?

And what does “honor” your parents mean, anyway? Obviously it means what your particularly cultural moment seems it to mean. Which is great! But what ancient Israel, and the broader ANE, deemed it to mean was caring for gravesites, bringing offerings, invoking names of the dead.

Yes, obviously, respect your elders. There are other laws for that - Deuteronomy 21:18-21, in particular. No one is questioning the broader cultural value of parental respect. That’s just not what’s at stake here, at least not primarily.

I think a lot rides on the word “honor,” which isn’t an obvious one for us. What constitutes honor is a shifting target, and is entirely a construction of any given society at any given time. And the Hebrew word may not even really mean “honor” the way we mean it.

But here’s a good text to check: Judg 13:17, where Samson’s father, Manoah, wants to know the name of the divine messenger so that they can “honor” him when his prediction comes true. That can’t mean “show respect to” - the messenger won’t be around anymore to respect.

It has to mean something like “make an offering in the name of,” or perhaps even “set up a shrine to” - it’s tangible, and it’s something done in the absence of the referent. So too for one’s absent parents.

One can also point, outside the Bible, to the Ugaritic passage on the duties of the ideal son, as it’s known, which is also oriented toward post-mortem care. See the forthcoming essay by @eshetbaalathaov on this text.

Obviously once folks stopped treating their dead this way - and I think that had a lot to do with the exile, fwiw - then the original meaning here fell away and was replaced by the banal ethical thing. As happened to so much of the Bible. Universalized and de-contextualized.

(This is why we as historical-critical scholars spend so much of our time re-contextualizing. When the Bible gets universalized - applicable equally to ancient Romans and present-day Americans - it’s ancient Israel that disappears as a result.)

Anyway, yes, respect your elders. But unless you’re also bringing them some snacks and drinks at their gravesite, you’re not *really* fulfilling the original intent of this commandment. Don’t you feel like a bad child?