Commentaries:
The word "fear" is a softened translation of the Hebrew word. The margin says, "You shall revere your parents." That is a stronger word, which is normally reserved for God. We revere God, but He directs us here to revere our parents. Parents have an awesomely high calling, and that calling is to be respected by the children because the reverence that God expects children to give their parents precedes the reverence He expects to come to Him when He initiates a relationship with them. This reverence for parents prepares us to revere God.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sanctification and the Teens
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Notice how powerfully God backs up the fifth commandment with the civil laws contained in Leviticus 19. In this context God names the fifth and fourth commandments in the same breath while implying the first.
The first thing required in this context is reverence (not honor) toward parents and Sabbath observance. These two are major pillars of good government and social well-being. Reverence is a profound, adoring, and awed respect—more than mere honor. It actually indicates "to tremble before," arising from our awareness of our weaknesses in the presence of the one we revere.
The Sabbath commandment influences social well-being in two ways. It first commands us to work six days. It takes work to make a community safe, clean, orderly, strong, peaceful, and prosperous. The other part of the commandment implies spiritual, moral, and ethical instruction, fellowshipping with others of like spiritual and moral mindset, and service to the community. That part of the commandment adds edifying qualities available nowhere else.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fifth Commandment (1997)
Leviticus 19 deals with social relationships within the community, and these commandments are seen as major regulators of community relationships. God gives all of these laws with a common thought in mind: "You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy." These laws are given because the Lawgiver is God (see verses 4, 10, 12, etc.).
They are not primarily statements of authority ("Do this because I tell you"), though some of this is included, but statements of the relationship between the Lawgiver and His law. The laws reflect His nature. The law is what it is because God is what He is. Therefore, if we want to be like God, we will imitate Him by obeying His laws in their physical and spiritual applications.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fifth Commandment (1997)
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