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Abstract: Among American evangelicals, the command to honor one's parents (Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16) has usually been interpreted as a commandfor young children to obey their parents. However, close study of this command reveals that it was primarily a command for adult children to care for their elderly parents. First, adult land- and slave-owning males were the implied audience of the Decalogue rather than children. Second, honoring and fearing parents in the ancient Near East was most commonly associated with adults and consisted primarily of physical support of elderly parents. Third, the other texts in the OT that describe the parent-child relationship clearly show the importance of honoring parents by caring for them. Fourth, NT texts and mainstream church tradition support this interpretation. The paper ends by looking at implications of this interpretation for today and some practical ways for adult children to care forparents in the modern world.
Key words: honoring parents, obedience, fear, curse, children, Ten Commandments, adoption, elderly
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During the third year of my doctoral program at Wheaton College, my family faced an important decision. My grandfather had passed away during my first year in the program, and my grandmother did not deal well with the stress of running the family business without her beloved husband. In the midst of worsening health and the beginning of dementia, she became suicidal, contemplating her husband's service revolver from the Second World War as a way to end her struggles. We put her in an assisted living home and began the process of cleaning out her home of forty years (including a $20,000 hazmat bill to clean out the laboratory in their garage!), traveling three hours to her home in Wisconsin almost every weekend for four months. I distinctly remember sitting at her desk on a cold winter weekend and wondering what her future would be. Would she stay in an assisted-living situation? It did not seem that she would have the financial means to do so, and she was not adjusting well in that context. But the other options did not seem much better. Would she live with her step-daughter (my mother)? Would my wife and I care for her, along with our young children? What were...