Honoring Your Semi-Divine Parents

 

Ancient readers asked a question about the Ten Commandments, one that occurs to few people nowadays: Why did they need to be written on two stone tablets? One ordinary-sized tablet would have been sufficient—in fact, archaeologists have uncovered lots of individual tablets that contain quite a bit more writing than the Ten Commandments. So why the two tablets? Apparently in answer to this question, the Jerusalem Talmud at one point suggests that Moses was given two copies of the Ten Commandments, each one written on a separate tablet (Shekalim 6:1).

 

But a more common answer held that two tablets were used in order to highlight the two different kinds of commandments involved: while the first group of commandments dealt with relations between man and God, the second group dealt with matters between one person and another. To stress the importance of both kinds, each group was accorded its own tablet.

 

But this division posed a problem: it was asymmetrical. The first four commandments are about matters “between man and God,” but then the next six are about matters “between one person and another.” It would be nice if that fifth commandment, to honor one’s parents, could somehow be moved into the “between man and God” column. But how?

 

One solution was to suggest that there is something about honoring one’s parents that is connected to honoring God. Here, for example, is what Philo of Alexandria, the first-century commentator and philosopher, said about the five-and-five division:

 

One set of enactments begins with God, the father and maker of all, and ends with parents, who copy His nature by begetting individual people. The other set contains all the prohibitions, namely, adultery, murder, theft, false witness, [and] covetousness. (The Decalogue, 50-51)

 

A text from the Dead Sea Scrolls agrees:

 

Honor your father [even] if you are poor, and your mother [even] if you are in tough straits. For as God is to a man, so is his father, and as lordship is to a man, so is his mother. For they are the smelting pot of your creation, and since He [God] has put them in charge of you…you should serve them. (4Q416 frag 2 col 3:15-17)

 

Why does this text stress honoring your parents even if you are poor? In ancient times, aged parents had no pensions to fall back on, so “honoring” them included providing for their material needs when they could no longer work. This is what the above passage is really talking about—providing support for your parents even if you yourself are poor and “in tough straits.” It says that serving them in this way—since they are, along with God, your co-creators—is really like serving God, hence another reason to move this fifth commandment over into the “between man and God” column. Ben Sira, a Jewish sage of the early second century B.C.E., likewise said: “Whoever fears the Lord will honor his father and serve his parents as masters” (3:7).

 

A later, rabbinic text concurs:

 

It says “Honor your father and mother” [by supporting them], while elsewhere it says “Honor the Lord with your wealth” [Prov 3:9]. Honoring one’s father [and mother] is thus equated with honoring God. (Mekhilta de R. Shim’on bar Yoḥai)

 

Thanks to such interpretive efforts, honoring one’s parents was, at least interpretively, moved over into the “between man and God” tablet. But it was surely not just a matter of symmetrical convenience. I think it’s no exaggeration to say that Jews have long distinguished themselves in observing this fifth of the Ten Commandments—no matter on which column it first appeared.

 

Shabbat shalom!